tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post2943466475000017174..comments2024-01-31T13:51:35.011-05:00Comments on ABC OF READING: BOOKS ARE RELICSThomas McGoniglehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05262994278231611143noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-56586706499079980092010-01-29T10:37:31.868-05:002010-01-29T10:37:31.868-05:00Man oh man....
Celine was right about the Chinese...Man oh man....<br /><br />Celine was right about the Chinese, huh, Tom?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3576804529126714608.post-70213909641431546932010-01-10T01:08:49.969-05:002010-01-10T01:08:49.969-05:00This phenomenon is not new. Many a scribbler pain...This phenomenon is not new. Many a scribbler painted his literary work with the end of a quill feather only to fear that his work had become superannuated by scribblers with pens fabricated out of metal and wood. Fountain pens eclipsed inkwells and Bics finished them off.<br /><br />I wrote my first novel with a Bic because I couldn't stand pounding away on a typewriter hours at a time. Computer keyboards were mana from technology heaven to my fingers and they never looked back.<br /><br />However. I think everyone over the age of about 45 shares your feelings about the demise of book culture. It was a fine Sunday afternoon that could be devoted to book stores and coffee houses, reading.<br /><br />But your friend (who sounds suspiciously like Paul Auster) does not get my sympathy. Why? Because popular literature has always cast its giant shadow over high brow literature and high brow literature has, all-too-often, drenched great literature with its very-dark-indeed rain cloud.<br /><br />Think of Marcel Proust's, Against St Beuve. In it, he demonstrates that France's greatest literary critic missed most of France's truly great writers. For example, St. Beuve said that Stendhal could not possibly be a great writer because he, St. Beuve, had met him and Stendhal didn't have the personality and character of a great writer. Eo ipso, fait non acompli.<br /><br />I could provide my own list of great American writers, from Dickinson to Melville, Twain and Whitman, and beyond, who were either completely misunderstood and ignored, or given faint praise and literary criticism which was little better than a politely muted gaggle of insults.<br /><br />Even today, France holds Poe in the highest esteem but American critics can barely stifle a laugh, and cannot comprehend this monumental French error of literary taste and judgment from the heart of Western Civilization.<br /><br />The list of writers whose editors could not eat lunch off their books is very, very much longer than the list of those who writers off whose books they could.<br /><br />Looking at it another way, there was a time in England when one out of every four books sold, excluding textbooks and the Bible, was by Edgar Wallace. <br /><br />Wallace published more than 170 hardcover books, 950 short stories, 23 plays and countless newspaper and magazine articles and yet, in 1982, all of his books had become public domain in England and only five of his books were still in print. <br /><br />His books are unreadable today. (He was a high brow writer.)<br /><br />I wouldn't get too depressed about that clerk in the Barnes and Noble bookstore who couldn't find Ulysses. I was in a Texas library looking for philosophy books and I was directed to a section that contained books about mysticism and magic. When I asked the librarian if there was a section that contained classic philosophy books by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle he said he had never heard of either one of them. <br /><br />I thought he said it with a straight face and he looked guileless enough but you can never be sure.<br /><br />Samuel Johnson said "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." <br /><br />I respond, “ONLY blockheads write for money because it is virtually impossible to make (real) money writing.”James Streethttp://www.streetwriter.netnoreply@blogger.com