Memo

I'll be taking a break from the Tournament for the rest of the week-- but please stay tuned.

Choices

32 SLOTS ARE LEFT

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

Choices, choices. Does Truman Capote have a large enough body of work with one great nonfiction book and a handful of decent stories? If so, who does he displace? Joseph “Catch 22” Heller? Herman Wouk? Caine Mutiny’s strawberries are part of the culture. Prolific icon Philip Roth? Richard Yates? Yates wrote a few great stories and at least one pretty good novel. As did J.F. Powers. Richard Wright? Can Wright be left out? Or Thomas Wolfe of a few giant novels? Or observant journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe? “The Right Stuff” and “Bonfire of the Vanities” are terms known by those who haven’t read the books.

We’ll see that 32 places isn’t a lot.

Playwrights? August Wilson? Langston Hughes? Neil Simon??? Will Neil Simon’s plays last? Will David Mamet’s plays last? In any sales job one meets individuals who quote from Mamet: the Glengarry leads; coffee is for closers, and such. Should any past but now largely forgotten playwrights like Clifford Odets get in?

32 slots isn’t a lot.

Why isn’t Ralph Waldo Emerson listed yet? Henry David Thoreau? Theodore Dreiser? Robert Lowell? Erskine Caldwell? Remember Tobacco Road. David Foster Wallace of our own time. Bret Ellis. Henry Miller. Joan Didion. Thomas Pynchon. James Dickey. Updike will likely have to take a space, like it or not. Hart Crane Wallace Stevens John Ashbery (ugh!) William Carlos Williams Maya Angelou Alice Walker James Cain Philip K. Dick IsaacAsimovNormanMailerEdithWhartonBernieMalamudSaulBellowSinclairLewisJamesJonesPearlBuckWilliam(EdgarRice?)Burroughs help!

32 spots isn’t a lot.

More Tournament Seeding

At this stage, the order in which I put these writers is arbitrary. Nearly all need to be in the tournament someplace. The hard choices have yet to be made.

#5 Seeds:

A.) T.S. Eliot.
B.) Gore Vidal.
C.) Susan Sontag.
D.) Allen Ginsberg.

#6 Seeds:

A.) Harriet Beecher Stowe.
B.) Nathaniel Hawthorne.
C.) William Faulkner.
D.) Robert Frost.

#7 Seeds:

A.) Stephen Crane.
B.) Carl Sandburg.
C.) J.D. Salinger.
D.) Arthur Miller.

#8 Seeds:

A.) Joyce Carol Oates.
B.) James Baldwin.
C.) Charles Bukowski.
D.) Kurt Vonnegut.

This fills out the top half of the bracket. Many spots are left. So far, I've listed very few living writers-- in part because few have a large footprint in society, and because literature itself no longer has a large footprint in society. There are no major figures, with the possible exception of Stephen King, who's a terrible writer. is too limited to have the artistic and intellectual ambition of a Rand or Sontag, has no personality, and breaks no new artistic ground.

Some writers like Chuck Paluhniak, mentioned in a comment on a previous post, have some footprint in the culture. Enough to include them in the brackets, but not ahead of these other figures.

It's not a great time for the art. Eliot gave readings in the 1950's in stadiums. Great poetic talent then, whether from vistors like Dylan Thomas or home grown poets like John Berryman, or fledgling geniuses like Sylvia Plath, was everywhere. Novelists like Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal through the 60's were celebrities. Some, like Susan Sontag, had personality and style. Creative writers were considered major thinkers.

Which creative writer is considered a major thinker now? If I'm missing a couple, please let me know!

#3 and #4 Seeds

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

#3 Seeds:

A.) Tennessee Williams.

B.) Jack London.

C.) Henry James.

D.) Emily Dickinson.

#4 Seeds:

A.) Kenneth Rexroth.

B.) Sylvia Plath.

C.) Edgar Allan Poe.

D.) John Steinbeck.

Not many surprises, I hope. Rexroth was not only a great poet and essayist, he mentored and influenced the Beats in San Francisco. I don't believe Ginsberg's "Howl" would've been possible without the example of Rexroth's "Thou Shalt Not Kill" before it.

With the rise of the feminist movement in the 1970's, and the publication of Plath's autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath became something of a pop figure. But, the talent lives up to it. Not only did she master the elements of real poetry, rhythmns, euphony, symbols, but she added an intense insight and energy-- her personality-- to the words. As with Emily D's work, the best poetry is eternal.

Jack London? Possibly the best-known and loved American writer in the rest of the world. Few short story writers equalled his mastery of the form. None were better. Ya gotta also love his dog tales.

Tennessee Williams' plays remain potent and remembered. "Stella!"

Though he took American letters in the wrong direction, IMHO, the stuffy, overwritten, and the self-absorbed, Henry James had too much strong output overall for him to be ignored. Even some semi-pop stuff like "Daisy Miller" and "Turn of the Screw." My favorite James work is "Altar of the Dead." Perfect reading for the depressed!

Poe more-or-less invented the detective story and the horror genre, which we've been stuck with, for good and ill, since.

With such a tournament, the question is still who's been left out.

Tournament Update

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT CONTINUED

The tournament site became a wild place last Saturday after the #2 seed announcements.

The Big Four dropped back into town so Hemingway could join Scott in the celebration. They held court at the new bistro. Mailer joined the two for a time but couldn't keep up with their drinking. Mailer was last seen staggering out the back door after losing an arm-wrestling contest to a grinning Hemingway. Mailer hasn't been seen since. Scratch one of my commentators.

At the same time, Emily D joined the two friends. She wore a sleek white dress, and spoke to Scott while Hem was engaged in his arm-wrestling.

"I am small like the wren, and my hair is bold," she told Scott, "as is my pen. If you would have the leisure to speak to me, I should feel quick gratitude."

She fell instantly in love with him, but was also intensely intimidated by Scott and by the situation. While Hemingway bellowed nearby.

Fitzgerald's green eyes were indeed entranced by the poet. He gazed at her wistfully-- but two glasses of wine were too much for Emily and she fled back to her room, vowing to ever remain. Scratch my other commentator.

Fitzgerald was later carried off unconscious himself, but has promised not to take another drink while in training. An observer, Raymond Carver, remarked that this "was a good thing. A small thing, but a good thing."

The rest of the night is blurry. Hemingway stood in the middle of the street challenging any writer to a fight. Melville and Twain wondered whether or not to intervene. Just then a dogsled pulled up. Jack London stepped out from behind the pack.

"What's doing?" he asked.

Herman M pointed to swaggering Hem, as if to ask for a favor.

Jack London, an authentic tough guy, knocked the bear out with one punch. Melville thereupon picked up the sprawling writer, threw him over his shoulder, not without difficulty, and the Big Four went back to their camp to resume fishing in the morning.

The night culminated at the coffeeshop across the street, which was packed to the rafters when Jack Kerouac stepped to the podium.

"This reading this coffeeshop this small all-American town incredible big porch big bridge in the mist this Emily Dickinson evening of beatitude writers everywhere without beginning or ending, heavenly, man. O Whitman! O Salinger! O Twain! It's Saturday night all over America.

"I think of Hemingway bears, Scott purple pink ties, Mailer Oates Plath noisemakers hepcat Walt Whitman writers sucking on beers and pipes scratching into paper nutty wild jazzy sweet words people are yelling or whispering blown boom trombone insights and attitudes to the beat of their inner peace,

"I think of soft smart Wharton Eliot Updike Redcoats sky-high with their reps happy to be part of this sacred gathering prayerful celebration,

"I think of all writers everyplace carrying on the tradition, man, karmic drinking of this art this experience, this too-musical too-cool tournament give me the vibe the beat the bebop syncopation keeping me going man while I sneak out the back door back stairs back on the road back into the starry Van Gogh heavenly night."

Next: The #3 and #4 seeds.

The Ayn Rand Problem

The complete dismissal of Ayn Rand’s novels by contemporary literary critics like Thomas Mallon says more about the narrow intellectual world in which these critics live, than it does about Rand’s work.

Thomas Mallon, in a 11/9/09 essay in The New Yorker, called Rand a “crackpot,” and assured his readers that Atlas Shrugged is “badly executed on every level of language, plot, and characterization.”

Really, Mr. Mallon? Every level? Yet that same novel has connected with, stirred, and shaped the minds of huge numbers of readers since the novel was first introduced. An impartial observer would suspect the book, as literature, must be doing something right.

Part of what the critics react to is Rand’s take-no-prisoners politics, her in-your-face defense of Capitalism. But they also react to the way she presents her ideas, which is with boldness, outlining her thesis on a very large scale. These critics are trained by the academy to be genteel and cautious—Mallon is a product of Harvard, Brown, and Radcliffe—and are made uncomfortable by those who break their stiff codes of behavior and style.

In other words, it’s about more than politics. Ayn Rand after all wrote in the 19th century tradition of popular novelists like Dickens, Hugo, and Dumas. These novelists painted with bold colors, embraced large themes, sought to encompass entire societies in their view, and didn’t flinch from melodrama. The American novelist who best carried on this tradition was Frank Norris— anything but an apologist for Big Business.

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Ayn Rand’s novels are filled with giant failings. They contain swaths of bad writing. Her characters aren’t realistic. The speeches her heroes engage in go on very long. Rand breaks tons of writing rules. Yet she gets away with it through the power of her voice, and the momentum of the narratives which carry readers along with her, crackpot or not. It’s the essence of literature.

Rand knows how to construct a narrative. Plot threads? There have been few plot threads more effective than “Who is John Galt?”

Ayn Rand had a giant ego but she also had a giant imagination: Galt’s Gulch; the mysteriously efficient motor found in an abandoned factory; the rail line—Rand creates enough myth and mystery to ensure the reader is captured by the book. Throughout is the story—the driving onward movement of plot, best expressed by the thrilling train ride that dominates a large part of the book. But, always, there’s the plot hook: “Who is John Galt?” What’s going on? Rand hangs her wealth of ideas upon this simple plot hook.

Rand isn’t writing anything which looks like an acceptable novel, but she does create an entire aesthetic, an expression of a unique viewpoint. We visualize the happenings of the story. She’s painting as much as writing. Atlas Shrugged evokes post-World War II American modernism, capturing the feeling of hyper-power, hyper-success-- monumental buildings, machines, and ideas representative of the most powerful and successful civilization that ever was. Most writers flinch from the very notion. Yet we live in that civilization. Maybe Ayn Rand is a more realistic writer than we thought.

Her characters, in their way, are equally as monumental. They’re stylized drawings. They’re meant to be ideals. Rand scorned religion but created her own, with its own gods—and asked the readers to be gods. Galt’s Gulch has echoes to H.G. Wells’ giant new humans in “Food of the Gods” escaping to a valley to create their own world. The novel is an obvious metaphor for technological progress.

Beyond this, Ayn Rand celebrates the artist. Curious that she didn’t believe in God. No author more celebrated creation. One of her heroes is a symphonic composer. One can almost hear the notes of his work. The book is filled with such evocative suggestions. The world Rand creates is created inside our heads.
Atlas Shrugged is a monumental, social realism-style painting, but it’s also theater, which is what the long speeches are about. Rand didn’t flinch from using every possible tool in the writer’s toolbox. Yes, she hit you over the head with them—but you stay to the end regardless.

By the end the plot gets a little ridiculous. The representation of ideas is taken too far. But while it lasts, the story is an exciting ride. The philosophy is part of the presentation: the all-encompassing aesthetic contained within the book. It’s all painting. It’s all theater. The book is gestures and clothes and looks and postures. It’s all style—which means nothing more than that Ayn Rand was an artist. 

Fitzgerald’s Writing

What made F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing unique?

Two factors. One is that, unlike today’s literary writers, he didn’t craft every sentence to be sparkling, a la John Updike. Much of his work consists of simple declarative sentences intended to advance the narrative, hook the reader, and set up the beautiful passages which stand out in our memories afterward. To use a baseball analogy, Scott Fitzgerald didn’t throw a fastball on every pitch.

Second, because as a youth he read a great deal of literary “pop,” pure unpretentious genre stuff, Fitzgerald was able to meld a pop sensibility with literary craft. This is notable about The Great Gatsby, which contains elements of romance and mystery which could’ve come out of a low-brow detective story. Fitzgerald understood the magic of pop lit, of how to create atmosphere and plot. Gatsby is one of the best-plotted works of fiction ever created.

Instead of writers today trying to duplicate Fitzgerald’s ability, we see instead a polarization of styles of writing. On one hand, purely commercial fiction with no depth of thought, and scant intelligence—no sense of intentionally creating significant fiction or crafting art. On the other extreme are workshopped literary writers who scorn narrative ability, whose focus is not on the reader, but who drop instead into egoistic lands of overwrought sentences about worlds existing inside their heads. What the two poles have in common is a retreat from the world.

Blend the pop and the literary like Fitzgerald did and you’ll resurrect the literary art.

To understand Scott Fitzgerald’s genius, read one of his Basil and Josephine popular stories, “The Captured Shadow.” Because he wasn’t intentionally creating “Literature,” he was freer with this kind of story to entertain himself. His natural ability flows freely. He ends up saying more about art, the mystery and magic of the creation of art—art’s ineffable qualities—than do other writers’ entire novels. Scott Fitzgerald had a pure naive wonder about the world and was able to convey this in his work.