<<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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