Subject
Re: Johnson-Wendel: "Time & Ebb" (fwd)
Date
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Roy Johnson <Roy@mantex.demon.co.uk>
I was about to defend my position on "Time and Ebb" when
Dustin Pascoe very kindly stepped in to do it for me.
Many thanks, Dustin. The issues, in summary, are these:
1. VN's short stories are *not* uniform in their quality
and distinction. [Whose would be?] It is our task
to discriminate between them, and to argue our case
with evidence from the text.
2. The short story as a literary genre has a long history.
In the twentieth century a number of distinguished
writers - Chekhov, Joyce, Mansfield, and Woolf - have
contributed to the development of the genre. VN has
participated honourably in this development.
3. VN was not an extra-terrestrial genius who visited earth
briefly and left behind a distinguished corpus. He was
like all other writers an ordinary human being with all
their foilbles and flaws. He was also a very talented
writer - for reasons my analyses try to make clear.
--
Dr Roy Johnson
From: Roy Johnson <Roy@mantex.demon.co.uk>
I was about to defend my position on "Time and Ebb" when
Dustin Pascoe very kindly stepped in to do it for me.
Many thanks, Dustin. The issues, in summary, are these:
1. VN's short stories are *not* uniform in their quality
and distinction. [Whose would be?] It is our task
to discriminate between them, and to argue our case
with evidence from the text.
2. The short story as a literary genre has a long history.
In the twentieth century a number of distinguished
writers - Chekhov, Joyce, Mansfield, and Woolf - have
contributed to the development of the genre. VN has
participated honourably in this development.
3. VN was not an extra-terrestrial genius who visited earth
briefly and left behind a distinguished corpus. He was
like all other writers an ordinary human being with all
their foilbles and flaws. He was also a very talented
writer - for reasons my analyses try to make clear.
--
Dr Roy Johnson