Matt’s Comments (group member since Mar 06, 2009)

Matt’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Im with oro - what do you think people talked about before tv brought us american idol and survivor?

Gatsby features posers, social climbers, and awkward friendships brought about by proximity and not much else - what's more highschool than that? it's like the breakfast club but with flappers

I think Salman Rushdie took a stab at the entirety of the faith some years back - just a little joke or two actually but it seems to have ruffled some feathers at the time

re the phrase 'experience-appropriate' - I understand literature to be all about expanding what is 'appropriate' or familiar - the great books (and not so great books) introduce us to new experience when we may have no idea of what it can mean and then these works help us frame that experience with meaning - stretching and pushing is difficult and painful

that seems the point - the experience range of the average 15 year old is probably closer to Dav Pilkey than it is to Captain Ahab - the idea is to point outward and upward towards what is possible and what is beyond

seems to me

Jimmy wrote: "I think my other complaint about Gatsby is that I don't find it to be that worthy of "classic" status. Sure, it has perfectly chosen words and complexly layered themes (but many books do). My main..."

so a crazy peg-legged dude searching through the entirety of the world's oceans for a particular white whale with a chip on it's shoulder probably bothers you too, right?

Jim wrote: "I am reading a book called TEN DAYS IN THE HILLS where there is a mention of Kant when walking with a friend asks Kant what reality is. Kant then kicks a stone.
I guess the stone being propell..."

I guess the author is familiar with that old story of Doctor Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkley:

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus.""
- Boswell's Life of Johnson

anywho, no one addressed what I thought was the more cogent question: how would Amazing Adventures be improved by a steamy explicit sex scene? (there is afterall, sex - just not described to Roiphe's liking apparently)

because it seems to me that if the answer is 'maybe it wouldnt' then Ive got to say that Roiphe is blowing smoke (which Im pretty sure is another one you can google...)

on the other hand while she does mention (and quotes a passage from) Mysteries of Pittsburgh she neglects to mention that the book's central dynamic is a bisexual love triangle of which it could be said (here's a wiki-quote:) "Because of the book's straightforward, even playful treatment of gay love and bisexuality, Chabon was early-on identified as a gay writer..." (again there's sex - it's just not described to her liking)

regarding Mysteries here is what she says:
"The literary possibilities of their own ambivalence are what beguile this new generation, rather than anything that takes place in the bedroom. In Michael Chabon’s “Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” a woman in a green leather miniskirt and no underwear reads aloud from “The Story of O,” and the protagonist says primly, “I refuse to flog you.”"

Roiphe makes no mention that the real issue is not ambivalence but ambiguity, no mention that the characters here are both fascinated by another man - this is lazy and facile on her part - misreading one scene and extending it as an example to describe the intent of an entire generation?

As I suggested earlier she is clearly 'cherry picking' in order to support her argument

nor anywhere do I see her noting that philandering, dissolute Grady Tripp (of Wonder Boys) could be a character drawn straight from the works of Roth et al

"...A few weeks ago in a San Francisco bar I saw a pretty young girl on crystal take off her clothes and dance for the cash prize in an "amateur-topless" contest. There was no particular sense of moment about this, none of the effect of romantic degradation, of "dark journey," for which my generation strived so assiduously. What sense could that girl possibly make of, say, Long Day's Journey into Night? Who is beside the point? That I am trapped in this particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to me than when I am home..."

Joan Didion, 1967

you dont think the sheer prevalence and ubiquity of the pornagraphic in our culture might impress authors to choose another direction away from the graphic depiction of every vivid detail in their choices when dealing with sex scenes in their books? I do.

Part of the appeal to an earlier generation was that frisson of danger when confronting the forbidden and the unexplored - the sort of victorian taint of naughtiness - that taboo of transgression - what is not licensed now? what not allowed? If you're reading this you are very likely on the internet at the moment - have a look around - let your imagination roam - go ahead, try to stump google...

In any event the real question must be asked: to what point? what do such scenes serve? How would Amazing Adventures (for instance) be better served by the inclusion of a steamy and explicit sex scene? would it?

yet another way to look at it then, is this: the young lions can scan the literary map and see that this territory has already been staked out, settled, hashed and done to death by the previous generation

the perceived lack of attention and/or difference in angle of address to the subject by the latter generation could simply be a response to that of their predecessors: a 'well, it's already been done' response or perhaps even in the Bloomian sense of Agon an out and out rejection or clinamenistic swerve away (if even unconscious of the choice)from the subject

Martyn wrote: "If you want to read about sex and literature, I recommend anything by Georges Bataille. His novellas and stories are great, so too, his essays. He's an important philosopher in my view."

this had me thinking about tears of eros - quite right you are Martyn - especially on the subject of transgressiveness

fatigue? fatigue of imagination? authors going through the motions, exhausting a subject no longer that important to them in real life, a subject no longer so cogent to the times, a subject quickly becoming a fading memory from their own actual experience (when was the last time Roth had a 3-some?)- that an old dude's writing about sex lacks vitality or becomes in one way or another strained doesnt strike me as so revelatory

For Updike, Roth, Mailer et al did she happen to mention the little matter of the sexual revolution occuring in the midst of their primes? because by now it's old news but to them it was a central fact

and coming from a place of repression (of all kinds) into the libertinism of the 60s and 70s you were likely going to see a whole lot of exploration and celebration of the topic I'd think

add to that the changing of gender roles and impact of feminism so difficult for many of the men of that generation to get thier heads around
I kind of think thier fascination is an obvious by-product of their times (as the authors of today have differing attitudes towards sex fashioned by our times)

which is not to say that there were significant authors choosing not to obsess with the subject at that time that she fails to mention there of course were nor that there are authors now who still obsess over the subject nor that there were and are women authors doing the same thing then and now

to me it seems like she came up with a thesis and in order to make it work was pretty careful with what she chose not to mention

I dont think it's a question of whether the book will go away

it's more of a question of whether the bookstore will go away

I used to love shopping in record stores and I thank Christ for Amoeba because that means my city still has at least one of those left - 'are bookstores next?' seems to me the real question

amazon playing fast and loose with the definition of the word 'sell'? you dont sell things for free...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12...

tee hee

dude, chill out? seriously? all I need to do is chill out? - sage advice humorless 63 old man who writes in all capital letters

from now on I shall be chilly like willy

Jim wrote: "Matt wrote: "WHY ARE YOU YELLING?"

lighten up

"

normally it's the people who are YELLING that are advised to lighten up, dope

me I'm light as a feather - comes from having a sense of humor

boo! they'll be fucking with Huck Finn next - dont get me wrong Im no fan of the N-bomb - but used in these works it's a product of it's times and we cant begin to understand it or the work on their own terms if we start dickering about and worrying that someone's panties are going to get all knotted

I thought we got past all this culture war bullshit in the 90s

WHY ARE YOU YELLING?