WASSERMANIA!

The archive of last night's Literature 2.0 radio show is now available for your listening pleasure in MP3 format.

As we mention on the Open Source site, we do take mild exception to Wasserman's prominently placed soundbite - "The best reading experience is to occupy your time with the worthy dead rather than the ambitious living."  Despite his generosity and graciousness with respect to our humble efforts, a  gentle riposte seems in order.

We point out that it’s enitrely because of their ambitious labors while living that these worthy dead merit our attention today. Some of us aren’t perhaps so keen to allow posterity to do all our handicapping.

There's more where this came from ... Check it out.

Comments

[Steve Mitchelmore]

It's curious isn't it? Wasserman condescends to litblogs because they rush to the first thoughts of writers rather than pausing to reflect on their second.

He is right of course, but only insofar as his clever observation is an example such rushing.

[ed]

Is this Wasserman's way of saying he's never read a book by David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, William T. Vollmann or Doris Lessing? Why doesn't he just cop and tell us that he's illiterate on the contemporary lit side? This would save everyone a good deal of trouble.

[tod goldberg]

I thought it was a very compelling discussion. I have to say that I admire Wasserman for being steadfast -- the dude believes what he believes and is unapologetic for it, and I found it interesting how much middle ground he and Mark have in common. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that when Mark finishes his novel, he should send it to Steve for representation. Really.

On another note, could the host have been worse? Perhaps it's because he said one of my great pet peeves: Internet websites. As opposed to abacus websites?

[TEV]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Steve is representing non-fiction exclusively. But believe me, I had the same thought within an hour of hanging up.

[Steve Wasserman]

To clarify: I believe the Internet is a most welcome development, vastly expanding democracy's reach. I admire the passion and zeal of bloggers and believe those sites which, over time, develop reputations for accuracy, compelling argument, pith and wit, will survive and will have deservedly gained the attention of readers.
As for literary criticism, my motto is "Two, three, many opinions." As Scoop Nisker remarked years ago when he was news director at KSAN-FM radio in San Francisco: "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." If you don't like what passes for book reviews in the pages of your local newspaper, go out and write your own. Many people are doing just that and it is helpful.
As for contemporary literature, I tried to suggest on the air that, far from believing the American novel to be dead, I believe it to be in excellent health. There are plenty of living writers who are tremendously gifted and whose fictions are worthy of attention and admiration.
It would be silly to ignore one's own time. But it would be worse to ignore the verdict that history has passed on the efforts of past authors. After all, they set the standard by which it is important to judge--at least in part--the efforts of the living.
It's the critical benchmark.
As for the authors I am now representing, it includes a mix of writers, including several prominent novelists.
Steve Wasserman

[Ed]

Steve: Some good points. But who sets the standard? The privileged staffers pontificatating in the New Yorker about novels that involve middle-aged males going through yet another mid-life crisis? The hoary-haired Harold Blooms who would lather themselves up over the old and predictable standbys?

As any historical hindsight evicnes, verdicts are often wrong or are, at the very least, too dismissive.

What of the Stanley Elkins or the Richard Yateses (both great talents) whose very endurance teeters on the vagaries of what's hot? What of John O'Hara, who only endures because of Geoffrey Wolff's biography and the occasional retrospective article? Or John P. Marquand's exceptionally skillful satires? Or Paula Fox? Or the short stories of Stanley Ellin, deceptively straightforward work that is almost completely out of print, but material that any serious writer can learn a lot from?

You spent a good portion of the radio show condemning those of us in the litblog community who would revive these names and I have to conclude, based on what I heard on Lydon's show, that you have a profound misunderstanding of litblogs. There is plenty of short and there is plenty of long. There is plenty of examination of these issues and enough emails and comments that partially ensure the kind of accuracy you champion.

But your resentment of the "ambitious living" fails, to my mind, to account for current artistic development and those who think seriously about literature. It hinders focus on how writers are using their influences and passions to expand and comment on the form of the novel.

If anything, the Internet has demonstrated that the benchmark is not only more visible, but also more malleable. I can only see this as a good thing. And I continue to remain mystified by your inflexibility on this point.

In other words, chill out and join the party. We'll be happy to turn up the temperature in the pool. :)

[Fran]

"The best reading experience is to occupy your time with the worthy dead rather than the ambitious living."

--Actually, I think that's a great line; it can hold a lot of "truths," and those truths could vary depending on the way the line is read. For example, the beginning could mean "the best reading experience" as in what kind of past reading experiences someone (like a writer) should have, or it could mean "the best reading experience" as in an of-the-moment experience, as in how to spend reading time the best.

I don't understand the seeming anger behind some of the responses, but then I don't know anything about Wasserman really--I didn't listen to the show being discussed either. I'm just saying: look at the line standing alone out of context and put your ego as a-writer-of-today aside for a moment....

The statement doesn't necessarily say no modern/living writers have written worthy stuff, or that there are no worthy modern writers, or that a reading experience involving them wouldn't be great necessarily (Wasserman seems to have clarified that too in his response here). It's more a relative comparison between then and now, not necessarily an "absolute" statement about the two kinds of writers mentioned--living or dead--taken singly. In other words, the line doesn't necessarily say all living writers are ambitious and all dead writers are worthy, or that all living writers are not worthy and all dead writers were not ambitious.

So many writers seem to have existed before us over the centuries; today we're just babes in the writing woods as far as I'm concerned. I think that for a long time now, probably every writer is and has been just a babe compared to literature's past; the "Literature Age" probably stretched out for so long before the many more modern writers even existed, both the living and dead more modern writers.

Fran

[PT]

What's the point of discussing literature when we can discuss Wasserman? Should a day go by without some consideration of What Wasserman Has Done Now? Fresh, innovative novels are fine, yes, but what of Wasserman? In glancing away from the screen for just a moment, have we lost sight of the threat Wasserman poses to Literature, not to mention Grammar, and Inked Lettering generally?