tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post5498063609922429735..comments2024-03-17T18:57:54.001+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: James Wood and LI's Reviewer EnvyRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-18612898942738305042008-01-04T02:02:00.000+01:002008-01-04T02:02:00.000+01:00EA,Myself, I like Bellow a great deal, but he is d...EA,<BR/>Myself, I like Bellow a great deal, but he is definitely in the white male i.d. group. Every group has its geniuses. And, to be fair, he would never have been the guy who wrote Humboldt's Gift if that was all there was to him - the difference between a novel and a dream is that in a novel, it isn't all wish fulfillment. That's why novelists understand so well how God came to create the devil, and how the devil came to have all the good lines. <BR/><BR/>As for Roth - this, you understand, is so totally off the cuff - the latter novels I can't seem to get through. There is a moment in I think it is the Ghost Writer, which was written in the 70s, in which you can sorta see Roth getting serious, seizing up, seeing himself as writing about literature instead of just keeping slightly north of the goof - and it is heartbreaking, because the better part of him, up to that moment, had known that his art is the joke distended until it burst. He was brilliant at doing that. But I'm not gonna judge Roth, since he's written, well, a whole shelf I haven't read. <BR/>I must say, though, except as a parlor game, who gives a fuck who gets the Nobel Prize? Well, I guess we are fucked from that very first report card, aren't we? Wantin' that A. That Iron cross, that medal of freedom, that Oscar, that Grammy, those stripes, that Real Estate Salesman of the Year, Ventura County, 1978. But do I really give a fuck about the literary taste of a buncha Swedes? who I don't even know?<BR/><BR/>A..a..and - read Running Dog, man!Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-70061569740090559312008-01-04T01:20:00.000+01:002008-01-04T01:20:00.000+01:00If you have absorbed Bellow as your model contempo...<I>If you have absorbed Bellow as your model contemporary novelist, you are going to be a sucker for stories in which old men making sweeping humanistic gestures while entertaining the hots for younger women.</I><BR/><BR/>This is funny (as in funny ha-ha) because Mr. Scruggs and I were actually talking about this not too long ago.<BR/><BR/>Could one also make the same judgment of Roth and Updike and Cheever as you do of Bellow? I admit my acquaintance with all of them is slight, but...well, whatever I've read of theirs seems like politically correct fiction that caters to the identity politics of affluent white males. And I think you know where UFO <A HREF="http://mortacredit.com/images/LootinDudesWeb.jpg" REL="nofollow"> stands on that.</A><BR/><BR/>The father of the significant other was an English prof at U/Conn who got on board in the mid 50s. Somehow, he escaped having to publish anything. And now, in his retirement, he likes make the same sweeping pronouncements to his daughter and her squeeze that he used to make to his students, and he is appalled—Appalled!—that Roth hasn't gotten the Nobel prize yet. Per his judgment, Roth is a great writer whose themes are universal and timeless, blah blah blah...while I realize that the trope of asserting the opposite is in general a lame one, but I think those adjectives apply more to Pynchon and Gaddis (I only ever read DeLillo's <I>Libra</I> and can't remember it too well) and that Roth, Updike, Bellow, etc., aren't going to age very well—or travel well beyond these shores, because it's all about their <B>goddamn white dicks</B>. Your thoughts on this point, <I>maestro?</I><BR/><BR/>—<A HREF="http://ufobreakfast.wordpress.com" REL="nofollow">et alia</A>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com