Who Is IOZ?: Loose Fish

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Loose Fish

Is there anything better than Moby Dick? It is just so fucking good, every single page a visceral pleasure. I was going to punt and say that without Melville there'd have been no Conrad, but I am feeling particularly declamatory this morning, and I'll come right out with it. There have only been three truly inventive writers in the novel form, and they are Cervantes, Sterne, and Melville. As Hillel said about something else altogether, the rest is just commentary.

38 comments:

Charles F. Oxtrot said...: It's a good thing there are lots of writers to choose from.

Did Hillel say that while with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before he OD'd?; 11:14 AM
Professor Coldheart said...: I have a sneaking suspicion you wrote this deliberately broad in order to flush the chumps. So, well, consider me flushed.

Joyce needs to be on that list. Regardless of whether you like what he did or not (I have never successfully dared Ulysses), he wrote that nonsense in order to redefine the novel as a form.; 11:20 AM
Anonymous said...: I would also add Joyce and Kafka, too, but they all are just commentary on Cervantes.

drip; 11:41 AM
miri said...: He then said, "Now go and learn it."

So don't stop reading. Though I agree with you on Melville.; 11:44 AM
IOZ said...: I deliberately left out Joyce. Ulysses is definitely a great one, and very funny too, but most of it was elsewhere and otherwise anticipated. You could make a better case maybe for Finnegan, but I don't know that you can really call it a novel.; 11:50 AM
BDR said...: "Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

"Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!"

- Brit; 11:56 AM
Ethan said...: You left Franzen off the list.; 12:06 PM
mp said...: Henry Fielding. Gertrude Stein (though you might use the word "destructive" rather than "inventive" to describe her.; 12:25 PM
Ellen1910 said...: C'mon now, Brit! Would you recommend we cast ourselves upon that "treacherous, slavish shore?"

Bulkington Rules!; 12:35 PM
druff said...: Moby astounded me except for the exhaustive treatments of every type of whale blubber etc, but i assume "every single page" was hyperbole.

Meanwhile i still cant bring myself to embark on 2666, which pisses off my gf cuz she bought it for me a year ago.; 12:35 PM
Dumbo said...: Gaddis; 12:37 PM
Christopher M said...: What happened to Calvino, Izz? Or are his novels not novelly enough?

List-making is for the sad and pedantic anyhow.; 12:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Rabelais not truly inventive? Gotta be a realist in there somewhere too. Don Quixote is unreadable. Love me some Melville though.; 12:52 PM
Anonymous said...: Besides, there have only been three truly inventive revolutions in history, and they are the French, Russian, and American. All these Muslim protesters are just commentary.; 1:04 PM
Modulo Myself said...: I'd throw in Defoe with those three.; 1:07 PM
la Rana said...: Ethan wins.; 1:10 PM
¯\(°_0)/¯ said...: Personally, I sometimes need to admit in a slightly embarrassed tone that I’ve never actually taken an intro literature course.; 1:23 PM
Professor Coldheart said...: What happened to Calvino, Izz? Or are his novels not novelly enough?

Can't speak for the host, but if I were making such a list I'd leave Calvino off, too. In "inventiveness" I presume there's also an element of influence: how much did the art form change as a result of this person's impact. if on a winter's night a traveler still holds up, but I didn't see a lot of people rushing to follow.

Oh! But suddenly I'm reminded. Nabokov. There's another one.; 1:29 PM
IOZ said...: Don't worry ¯\(°_0)/¯, buddy. You are taken seriously by bloggers with Ph.Ds n stuff.; 1:55 PM
davidly said...: Surely Herr Monsieur doth joust.; 2:13 PM
¯\(°_0)/¯ said...: Thanks IOZ! The best I can say is that I have read both John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and I think I understand the material well enough to be taken seriously.; 2:35 PM
rob payne said...: Perhaps not the best choice for your point as Moby Dick was based on an actual event.; 2:48 PM
fish said...: I put Glenn Beck right up there with Sterne.

Wait, he wasn't kidding?; 3:07 PM
John B. said...: Fyodor Doestoevsky was a pretty good writer and novelist...and Billy Spears was a pretty excellent playwright too...; 3:43 PM
Anonymous said...: There has only ever been one revolution in history, and that is the Dance Dance Revolution.; 4:14 PM
Anonymous said...: what a paltry discussion.

eyoz, did you catch the one paragraph (towards the end of the second third, i believe) where melville throws some respect cervantes' way? wish i could remember the chapter.

also, note that moby dick was dedicated to the immeasurably inferior hawthorne. i think they were neighbors.; 4:18 PM
modulo said...: ...and maybe Alain Robbe-Grillet, for good measure.; 4:21 PM
Anonymous said...: Heads up: Conrad fucking hated Melville's work.; 5:04 PM
Ethan said...: wutta paltry dischkussin.; 5:07 PM
¯\(°_0)/¯ said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5:14 PM
¯\(°_0)/¯ said...: Why did Conrad hate Melville? I can imagine his reasons, and am kind of enjoying doing so, but I've never heard this before.; 5:16 PM
The Medium Lobster said...: Only one novel has ever been written, ever, in the history of literature. It was "The Old Curiosity Shop." The management said to say they're very sorry.

Everything else that has ever been written in the history of everything, as it turns out, has been a cleverly-disguised limerick. You're allowed to enjoy these other works, of course, but only if you remember to sigh periodically, to remind yourself of the magnificence from which you've separated yourself by engaging with lesser art.; 5:43 PM
IOZ said...: Yeah, we've all read the Conrad dis on Melville, but for a guy who says he never finished Typee, he sure did, um, find himself accidentally inspired by it, not to get all Harold Bloomy, god forbid. He also criticized Melville's idiosyncratic prose, which is pretty funny considering the source.; 8:07 PM
Kerry said...: Amen! Oh lord the try-works chapter.; 12:45 AM
Anonymous said...: Some things are better than Moby Dick.

Black dick, for starters.; 1:23 AM
Soj said...: Typee is pretty bad :( I listened to it on audiobook though (from Gutenberg).; 11:42 PM
tdaschel said...: a) Melville's Pierre is fecking *mad* / some kinda gothic satire .. or something.

B) Conrad's The Secret Agent vs. DeLillo's pre-Underworld work (one of Meester Don's speakers in Mao II says something on the order of "novelists are failed terrorists" / and, yeah, i think he lost steam after the Wahhabists crashed planes into our Shit).; 12:13 AM
Anonymous said...: My be more then a novel but John Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy".; 2:09 PM

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Loose Fish

38 comments:

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