[lit-ideas] Re: Another Question
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:36:16 -0500
I agree with the prize thing. That's why I don't like literature until
it's stood the test of time. The thing below on Toni Morrison, though,
makes me think she might be a pretty good writer, since dysfunction makes
the world go round. Spiritual endings would invalidate the whole thing.
They don't work I also dread that she has what to me is an unreadable
style, like Saul Bellow. I remember reading Garcia Marquez a long time ago
and I thought he put his finger on a lot of reality. I think half the time
writers that write great works do it unconsciously. I wonder sometimes
about, for example, Death of a Salesman. How is someone who is absolutely
clueless about real life (Arthur Miller institutionalized his Downs child
and never mentioned him after that) know anything about feelings, emotions,
motivations. I never quite got that play although I have a sense that
there's something there. Shakespeare was a great observer. He saw
everything and recorded it in one form or another in his works, even if his
own marriage was a failure.
> [Original Message]
> From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 12/24/2005 2:15:23 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Another Question
>
> > Why does no one want to discuss literature? Is it too much work? A
bus driver's holiday?
>
> Louis Menand's essay in the current New Yorker is very funny. He's
writing about literary
> prizes. James English just published a book on this topic. English points
out that an art
> work has no inherent value (it's just ink on paper) (in contrast to, say,
a kilo of gold).
> The artistic prize "assigns" social value to the art work. The
ink-spots-on-paper now
> becomes the Booker Prize winner.
>
> Literature has been warped by political correctness and politics. Trivial
local writers
> churn out sloppy work, but if one gets a prize, she suddenly becomes "The
Example of Maori
> Literature" and appears in anthologies worldwide and is taught in endless
university
> classes.
>
> A few writers and artists rejected their Nobel prizes, and they were
right; the prize is
> worthless. But now, it's become chic to reject prizes, so that doesn't
mean anything
> anymore.
>
> The funniest part of Menand's essay is his capsule description of The
Modern Novel. "It
> should be a hybrid of postmodernist heteroglossia (multiple and high-low
discursive
> registers, mixed genres, stories within stories), and pre-modernist
narrative (conventional
> morality, the simulation of an oral story-telling tradition.) (...) the
features of the
> world-literature prototype: a trauma-and-recovery story, with
magic-realist elements,
> involving abuse and family dysfunction, that arrives at resolution by the
invocation of
> spiritual or holistic verities. If you add in a high level of technical
and intellectual
> sophistication, this is a pretty accurate generic description of a novel
by Toni Morrison."
>
> Toni Morrison has both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize.
>
> This is the problem with discussing literature. Or film. Or any of the
other arts. Much of
> it is fake. There are over 9,000 movie prizes now, which far outstrips
the annual production
> number of movies (about 1,000). Many items win multiple prizes. Even
Borders and
> Barnes&Nobles now award prizes to their own products. What's next? The
Big Mac, winner of
> the McDonalds Quality Award? Don't laugh. The joke is too serious.
Michael Jackson has won
> over 240 prizes.
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
>
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