In a message dated 11/9/01 10:26:50 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< many of the highly praised authors he discusses are people I have no
interest in or tried and really disliked. >>
I have no idea who B. R. Myers is, Mary, but boy did take on a few authors
whose over-inflated reputations have always baffled me. Like Annie Proulx,
for example. And the paragraph he quotes from Don DeLillo's "White Noise" is
the exact paragraph that made me put down that book and never bother to even
think of attempting to read another DeLillo novel.
But his take on that insufferable gas bag Toni Morrison -- who in my opinion
makes an exceptional sleep aid, but is hugely overrated as a writer -- was
priceless:
"At the 1999 National Book Awards ceremony Oprah Winfrey told of calling Toni
Morrison to say that she had had to puzzle over many of the latter's
sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was "That, my dear, is called
reading." Sorry, my dear Toni, but it's actually called bad writing. Great
prose isn't always easy, but it's always lucid; no one of Oprah's
intelligence ever had to wonder what Joseph Conrad was trying to say in a
particular sentence."
And all this time I thought I was missing something with Proulx, DeLillo,
Morrison and some of the others mentioned in this article . . .
Thanks, Mary.
--Bob
