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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose (Paperback)
by B. R. Myers

I was looking at a copy of B.R. Myers’ Manifesto and was tempted
to purchase it. He does in places harshly criticize Annie Proulx, whom I
admire. My admiration for Proulx made me hesitate to purchase the
book. Yesterday was the release date of the Brokeback Mountain DVD. I
was at the store when the doors opened to purchase my copy (widescreen
version). One must admit that Proulx has some kind of exceptional
ability to come up with a 30 page story which has such repercussions.
Also, she won a Pulitzer for The Shipping News.

I understand what Myers is talking about in his criticisms, regarding, for
example, admirable or favorite sentences. I personally enjoy savoring a
work at the sentence level, but not everyone feels this way. If I
remember correctly, Myers argues that the book should be such a page
turner that the average reader would not dwell long at the sentence level.
Perhaps Myers sees sentence level reading or writing as a cop-out to
mask other short-comings.

I am reminded of my college study of Bach’s St. Matthews’ Passion.
I learned that the lowest note of the entire work occurs upon the word
death. How many listeners in the audience will catch that? None, I
would imagine, unless they were following along with the score in hand.
Still, it is a profound touch which delights the beholder who discovers it.
One of the few subtleties I caught while reading Tolstoy’s War and
Peace, 40 years ago, was that early in the novel, one character says
Je vous aime[b] (“I love you” in the courtly but alien language of
French), but much later in the novel says, [b]Ya vas lyublyu (“I love
you”, in native Russian, now that he is in touch with his roots). Sigmund
Freud wrote how breathtaking it was when he first laid eyes upon the
Parthenon, having only read about it as a school child, but now to see the
palpable reality of its existence outside a textbook's pages. Yet, only an
architect will realize, after careful measurements, the even more beautiful
and overpowering fact that the Parthenon was built, not perfectly straight,
or it would have appeared crooked to the curved retina of the human
eye, but rather, was built with a slight curvature, so it might give the
illusion of straightness and perfection; perfection achieved through
imperfection, yet a technique which evades the first glance.

Myers describes an interview with Toni Morrison where Oprah Winfrey
finds certain passages obscure. Morrison quipped something like “That,
my dear, is called reading” (paraphrasing). I understood
Morrison’s retort to mean that the fault lay not with the author’s obscurity,
but with the reader’s density. Myers argues that writers of bygone eras,
such as Conrad, wrote with a clarity accessible to an Oprah Winfrey.

Perhaps authors should lay down that same gauntlet of challenge which
the Prophet Mohammed brandished for his Qu’ran, daring anyone to
produce one Surah (book, chapter) which equals his style. It is easier to
criticize The Shipping News than it is to produce something
comparable.

Quite obviously, the Nobel Prize committee criticized Pynchon’s work by
considering Gravity’s Rainbow in 1975 but then declining to award
it, and bestowing no award for that year.

We can point to books which are very popular, best sellers, and say that
they are not good literature. We can also point to great literature which is
totally ignored in its day, but is rediscovered by some subsequent
generation. Faulkner and Hemingway criticized each other in their day,
yet we see both as different but great writers.

http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml

(start of excerpt)

The first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901 to one Sully
Prudhomme. Since then, the Academy has chosen many deserving
authors such as Thomas Mann (’29), Halldór Laxness (’55), Samuel
Beckett (’69), and Joseph Brodsky (’87). However, one must question the
judgment of any committee that can give Derek Walcott or Toni Morrison
a million bucks (1992 and ’93 respectively) yet allow James Joyce, Jorge
Luis Borges and William Gaddis to die in near-obscurity.

...
Solzhenitsyn got one but they ignored Nabokov..
…

Pynchon’s agent should fax the "Byron the Bulb" excursus from Gravity’s
Rainbow to Stockholm immediately. That passage alone qualifies him for
the award.

http://www.themodernword.com/gr/Book1.htm

http://www.themodernword.com/gr/main_index.htm

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/memb...TF8&display=public&page=3

By the way, when this book [Gravity's Rainbow] was denied the Nobel
Prize in 1975, it became the first and last year that no prize was awarded
for literature. It became the nil year, the entropic year, and how very
Pynchonesque!

…

Stephen King’s genius can be found in many places, particularly in his
ability to take the metaphorical and make it literal. It’s a literary device
that, in our time, only Franz Kafka and Dr. Seuss managed to pull off so
well. In the short story "The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands," there’s an
inscription carved in stone and aglow above a fireplace: "It is the tale,
not he who tells it." Just this once, the [Nobel] Academy should bestow the
award upon someone people actually read.

(end of excerpt)

http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/...ws/0971865906/103-1404912-0562220

(start of excerpts)
Almost 60 years ago, George Orwell wrote the immortal 'Politics and the
English Language'. That essay has taught three generations of journalists
the virtues of plain writing and the desperate need for clear thinking. Now
B.R. Myers has given the same priceless gift to the novelists of the world.
The American literary novel may seem to be in terminal decline, but if the
next generation of writers should read this book and learn its lessons,
American literature may have a bright future after all.

…

(one poster shares with us their reading list of choices):

Myers tells you which writers to steer clear of. Unfortunately it doesn't tell
you much about writers to seek out. Following Myers's principles, I will
recommend a few from my own shelves.

1. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. Capote's non-fiction novel is the
best thing he ever wrote and is a model of great narrative. No American
writer today can touch him.

2. Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow. Doctorow tells his story using, in part,
real-life characters. It is irresistible. Time magazine called it one of the 10
best novels of the 1970s, and they were right.

3. Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann. Don't laugh. Susann wrote
direct, clear-eyed prose about the hell show business is on women. And
what a great story. As the Salon Guide to Contemporary Literature rightly
observes, she has had many imitators but no equals in this genre.
Excellent.

4. Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl. Dahl writes unforgettable short
stories. They stick in your mind because they are so damn good and
exciting to read.

5. The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter. What love feels like: the joy, the
jealousy, the mystery, the secrets. What does it all mean? Baxter gives us
hints in these always exciting, often erotic stories.

I could go on, but these give you an insight into what Myers's is onto.
Great popular writers can be damn good, literary-wise. Do a little
exploring and you will find this to be absolutely true.

(end of excerpts)

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