¡Bemsha SWING!: One Exception

8 dic 2010

One Exception

... to my abiding interest in the 1945-75 period is mainstream fiction. I don't care to revisit the Roth, Bellow, and Updike novels I used to read. I have no interest in Malamud or Cheever, John O'Hara. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy some of this material back in the day, but I don't really feel like doing back there, back to that place. Some day I might go and see how Vonnegut has held up, though I'm afraid of what I might find. It might be better to have my memories of it than to attempt to experience it all over again as a 50-year old guy.

6 comentarios:

Zed dijo...: I recently reread Cat's Cradle; that hasn't held up at all and probably isn't much fun except if you're a teen. The one Roth novel I really like, _Sabbath_, does not belong to this period. Is British mainstream fiction (say Muriel Spark) encompassed in your yawn? And how about mainstream short stories?; 11:56 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: I like some of Iris Murdoch. I read many, many short stories in the New York by mainstream writers in the 1970s. After a while tedium sets in. All those perfect stories!; 12:02 p. m.
Vance Maverick dijo...: [Second try -- ignore if superfluous]

What do you make of Barthelme (D)?

(I'll assume you wouldn't file Pynchon under "mainstream".); 7:09 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: I went through a big Barthelme phase in the 70s. I don't like his sons very much, but he was ok. I don't know if it's something I would revisit now.; 7:46 p. m.
Thomas dijo...: I have something like empathy for Roth. I think his novels are bad in exactly the way my novels would be bad if I ever tried to write one.; 12:01 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: That's how I feel about certain poets. That they write poems that look like those written by intelligent and otherwise talented people who lack just one element in their make-up: the ability to write a poem.; 1:10 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

8 dic 2010

One Exception

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