Comments | benpeek: Literature Bores Me, But So Does This Discussion

benpeek

Literature Bores Me, But So Does This Discussion

Jan 07, 2009 09:02

Over at Harpers Online, Arthur Krystal says:

The ability to respond to prose and poetry hasn’t entirely disappeared, but it has been dulled. This is a dicey business to discuss. There are many people who still depend on novels and poems for enjoyment and intellectual stimulation, and they tend to dismiss someone who feels differently. Clearly, I’m ( Read more... )

Comments 4

ataxi January 6 2009, 22:56:21 UTC

He seems to be saying that there aren't any sufficiently different new forms, style, mixes, etc. remaining that would qualify a modern writer as a genre-transforming genius. That literature is formally exhausted.

Seems a pretty big call to me. Mind you, I'm the type of person who does read quite a few classics, on the basis that history is a pretty good filter.

I just finished reading Nam Le's The Boat (which is so hot right now) and occasionally I did wonder whether it would be much remembered in ten years. It's pretty good, although it is exactly the type of thing that gets a warm critical reception at the moment: moral, courageous, "morally courageous" stories that open windows onto "real life" in exotic locales.

I also recently finished The Master and Margarita, which I much enjoyed, and which was completed in around 1940 (but only published in 1965 or so). It has a charming narrative persona that drags you laughingly from scene to scene, from character to character, like the mellow voice-over from an old Disney cartoon ( ... )

benpeek January 6 2009, 23:23:10 UTC

He seems to be saying that there aren't any sufficiently different new forms, style, mixes, etc. remaining that would qualify a modern writer as a genre-transforming genius. That literature is formally exhausted.

to a degree that's what i took from it, too, but i found the way he kept connecting to the canon disturbing. sure, someone like joyce pushed a lot of boundaries, and had a fair bit of difference in his work, and that's cool, but as i kept reading, i kept thinking of work he simply wasn't referencing, from the easy marks of burgess to the less easy of shelley jackson's skin project.

i quite liked THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, it must be said.

ataxi January 6 2009, 23:45:48 UTC

The Master and Margarita featured that compelling mix of petty, humorous viciousness and also, in the Pilate narrative, pathos. It was also an urban fantasy that wasn't obsessed with being in gritty contrast to the high fantasy of today (since that junk mostly didn't exist at time of writing). Very refreshing book.

I've read some Burgess. I have no idea who Shelley Jackson is, but I'm happy to be educated. And I've read some Joyce (Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses) but probably not as much as I'd like ( ... )

benpeek January 7 2009, 00:01:14 UTC

jackson is an american writer. she's probably most well known for her last novel, HALF LIFE, which i haven't read (i think it won a couple of awards, though). what's interesting about her, however, is that she has a project called SKIN, in which she is writing a story upon the skin of men and women around the world; each one of them becomes a word, and the story can only be read once all these people are bought together. it's quite a fascinating idea, really.

http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skin.html