tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1701465038062786253.post26426460517750565..comments2024-03-28T02:25:56.451-07:00Comments on The Fictator: GrumbleKatharine Coldironhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10710500266239699918noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1701465038062786253.post-7030939973889565292012-10-04T09:24:50.869-07:002012-10-04T09:24:50.869-07:00I agree, nothing is still nothing. Poor Barth. Car...I agree, nothing is still nothing. Poor Barth. Carver's decidedly saying <i>something</i>, I'm just never perfectly sure what it is. <br /><br />I don't know if the stuff we love in youth ever holds up quite the same way, but I'd definitely be interested in knowing what you think these days. You might love it for different reasons. Or you might admire it without liking it. <br /><br />To me DFW is just as oblique as Carver but in the opposite way. He obscures linkages with more and more and more and more and more words. I like to be more sure that I get it than I usually am when I read him. And I haven't tried DeLillo again since I was much younger; I know I should, but I truly disliked him then. Katharine Coldironhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10710500266239699918noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1701465038062786253.post-42267008595264830062012-10-03T21:51:18.305-07:002012-10-03T21:51:18.305-07:00I am a little embarrassed to admit how in thrall I...I am a little embarrassed to admit how in thrall I was to Carver when I was in college. I've got books of his in French that I bought in Paris -- and I don't even read French. It's impossible to overstate how influential he was in the 80s and 90s, and I don't think that influence was necessarily positive. Actually, it was DF Wallace (along with DeLillo) who finally returned fiction back to its maximalist roots. Read The New Yorker from those days and it was pretty slim pickings. These days, Cormac McCarthy is holding down the minimalist fort. He does a fine job there, but I don't think there's room for too many more. John Barth had some fun at Carver's expense in The Tidewater Tales when he quipped, "Less may be more, but nothing is still nothing." I've not gone back and read Carver in a long time; I'm afraid it wouldn't hold up. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com