Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Joyce Carol Oates

MT (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Fri, 16 Oct 1998 17:37:02 -0500 Fred Willard:

<<I don't want to get too academic here, particularly since I don't have
any academic credentials, but I don't see the distinctions between
fine and popular art as being as sharp as they may have been at
one time.>>

The distinction was, I suspect, invented and then upheld by very
constipated and stuffy people, of the kind that thinks that Flaubert was
a genius and Robert Louis Stevenson a hack (the reverse is true, I
think). In these matters, I always root for the better storyteller.

Last night I read Nathanael West's (Nathan Weinstein's) masterpiece,
_Miss Lonelyhearts_. It's the length of a typical Gold Medal, and could
well have been written by Willeford...it has that surreal atmosphere,
that wry humor, and that sure-footedness. Where do we put West?

Regards,

MT
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