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Copyright 1992-2004 Victor Lombardi
Contract vs. Status writing
An attack on postmodern literature by Jonathan Franzen, which equates difficulty with high art. I see an analogy to design.
The original article is offline in the New Yorker, an interview is online.
'...I think it's kind of a natural idea. As a student, you're handed Milton or Shakespeare, you're told that it's great literature, and you find it difficult to read - at least, at first. Or you're in gym class, trying to pole vault, and the bar keeps getting raised, and you learn that the more difficult the jump the better it is. If you think of a novel as a contract between the reader and the writer, an agreement to entertain and be entertained, difficulty doesn't make much sense...'
Friday, September 27, 2002 | Permalink | Filed in Literature