Best American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

In the earliest years of English settlement on this continent, there was considerable intermarriage between Irish female indentured servants and African male slaves, who, initially, were treated more like indentured servants. As the idea of miscegenation developed, allowing even indentured Irish girls to marry Black men became repulsive. Of course, while masters were allowed to have sex with their female slaves in order to create more slaves. However, Black men were quickly seen as a threat should they wish to marry/have sex with white women.

Although unstated, the element of sexual abuse of even young slave girls by masters hovered beneath the surface of Sethe's murder of her daughter.

Her grief is so enormous that she reanimates her dead daughter, says the "cow"

So what??? The grief of millions of workers who were worst off than slaves ACCORDING TO DUBOIS would serve to reanimate thousands of dead daughters who died under material conditions that were far worst than the conditions that the crazy woman, who, as the "cow" said was suffering from temporary insanity.

The novel's influence on the unaware and the IGNORANT is that ONLY among African-Americans, who, of course, were ground under the heels of the brutal plantation owner( a charge that is false) suffered because of the hard heartedness of non-blacks in America.

Nowhere in the novel can one find plaudits for the best president the USA ever had--Abraham Lincoln.

Nowhere in the novel can one find assertions that thousands in the North worked hard and became know as ABOLITIONISTS.

Nowhere in the novel can one find that many of the owners of the Plantations( both large ones and small ones) treated their slaves a lot better than the Northern Factory Owners treated their "employees"

Again, Beloved is a lying twisted piece of race carder propaganda!! Only in the United States, in the century of Political Correctness and enormous "guilt" for what has been done to African-Americans( Yes, even Vietnamese who have recently come to the USA are guilty because if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem) by the others in the country.

Beloved should have a cover including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Minister Farrakhan!!!

Based on Possum's dislike I may very well go and buy Beloved.

Please do so, Dyslexia. And, if you are really in the mood for reading, you might enjoy the Immortal Joseph Conrad's novel- "The Nigger of the Narcissus"

Bloom
BernardR,

You mentioned you'd like to see some criticism of Harold Bloom. Perhaps you'd be interested in this:

http://www.hudsonreview.com/epsteinSu02.html

This is an essay, Bloomin' Genius by Joseph Epstein, published in the summer 2002 number of The Hudson Review.

Epstein appears to see Bloom as somewhat less than estimable.

I look forward to reading your analysis.

I saw the book by Harold Bloom at the GoodWill the other day and didn't buy it. I might have except I'm sick of his name. Bought Paul Theroux and a Cormac McCarthy instead.

I don't mind intellectuals writing and defending lists. I'd just rather not be battered with the news of it over and over and over and over.

Knowing Dys and the breadth of his reading and understanding, I'll listen to him anytime.

Oh, wait, I'm going to see Theroux and McCarthy dumped on...


We all don't read for the same reasons. We all don't go to law school for the same reasons. Why this has to be a matter of slamming, using words like "cow" perjoratively, even if it is a poster's avatar, I don't understand,
except people like slamming instead of civil discussion.

Corkey- Yes, thank you for the reference to Epstein's commentary on Bloom. I read it carefully and found that he indeed made some good points. However,you must realize, as I am certain that you do, that this is ONE essayist writing about a major literary critic. I have read both Bloom and Epstein and found that while Epstein could be classed as being more enjoyable, Bloom gave me more real ideas about the nature of literature.

Epstein, in a clever book-"Snobbery"-The American Version, which I have in my Library, is capable of writing sentences such as

quote from "Dear old Yareton"

"Go with the Snobbery" I tell the occasional student who asks me where he or she ought to go to graduate school, Why go to the Harvard Law School? It's the name, stupid"

It is clear that Epstein is highly sensitive to cachet and position. It is not,therefore, unusual that Epstein would critique a professor of Criticism who resides in the higher reaches of Yale--Northwestern, although a good school, cannot approach such heights.

Who is Epstein?





Joseph Epstein





1937-
Noted essayist, short story author and novelist was born in Chicago and grew up in Rogers Park. He then attended the University of Chicago and is now a prominent member of the literature faculty at Northwestern University. Perennially included in the Best American Essays, Epstein edited the series in 1993. He also edited the Norton Book of Personal Essays (1997). He spent many years (1975-1997) as the editor of American Scholar Magazine published by the Phi Beta Kappa society. He contributed essays in each issue under the moniker Aristides. Additionally, he has published several collections of essays and is a regular contributor to Commentary, The New Yorker, Harper's, New Republic, New York Review of Books and The Weekly Standard. His story collection, GoldIn Boys won the title of "Notable Book of the Year" from the New York Times Review of Books in 1992.

He is a teacher in the acclaimed Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University where he has taught classes in advanced prose, writing fiction, as well as literature classes on Henry James, Willa Cather, and Joseph Conrad. In addition, he is a Trustee of The Hudson Institute, a think tank focusing on social science issues. As if that weren't enough, he won the 1998 Harold Washington Literary Award for the most prominent man or women of letters in Chicago.

Perhaps one of the cleverest writers of our times, Epstein specializes in the personal or familiar essay. His insightful and penetrating observations and wry prose combine to make him one of the most enjoyable contemporary authors. He has also written short fiction, as well as a number of works of literary criticism.

Works:


Divorced In America, 1974
Ambition, 1980
Plausible Prejudices, 1985
The Middle of My Tether
Familiar Territory
Once More Around the Block, 1990
A Line Out For A Walk, 1991
Partial Payments, 1991
The Golden Boys, 1992
Best American Essays (editor), 1993
Pertinent Players, 1993
With My Trousers Rolled 1995
The Norton Book of Personal Essays (editor) 1997
Life Sentences, 1997
Portraits : A Gallery of Intellectuals, (editor) 1997
Fabulous Small Jews, 2003
Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins, 2003

ESSENTIALLY AN ESSAYIST!!!

and now, Bloom--



Bloom, Harold

ADVERTISEMENT


1930?-, American literary critic and scholar, b. New York City. The son of Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Russia, educated at Cornell (B.A., 1951) and Yale Univ. (Ph.D., 1955), the distinguished critic, author, and academic is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and Berg Professor of English at New York Univ. He has written more than 20 books and edited or written the introductions for some 400 other volumes. One of his best-known works, The Anxiety of Influence (1973), postulates a titanic Oedipal struggle in which great writers interpret and revolt against their literary fathers, a theme developed in A Map of Misreading (1974), Poetry and Repression (1976), and Agon (1982).

Bloom has also written studies of many individual authors, e.g., Shelley (1959), Blake (1963), Yeats (1970), Wallace Stevens (1977), and Shakespeare (1998). His wide-ranging literary concerns are represented in The Western Canon (1994), in which Bloom analyzes the works of 26 great masters; in How to Read and Why (2000), in which he presents a manual for literary enjoyment and enlightenment; and in Genius (2002), in which he explores the accomplishments of 100 great writers. His interest in religious and scriptural questions is apparent in such works as Ruin the Sacred Truths (1988), The Book of J (1990), in which he posits that a woman wrote part of the biblical Pentateuch, and The American Religion (1992). In addition to many academic and literary honors, Bloom was awarded a 1985 MacArthur fellowship.


I am very much afraid that the essayist may be just a bit jealous of the literary critic who has not only done more important and critical work but has garnered many more literary awards.

Epstein does make some telling points, but I have read both of them.

If Epstein was a baseball player, he would be classed as a very good utlitiy infielder.

Bloom, on the other hand, would be a player who makes the all-star team each year.

The "cow" wrote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the earliest years of English settlement on this continent, there was considerable intermarriage between Irish female indentured servants and African male slaves, who, initially, were treated more like indentured servants. As the idea of miscegenation developed, allowing even indentured Irish girls to marry Black men became repulsive. Of course, while masters were allowed to have sex with their female slaves in order to create more slaves. However, Black men were quickly seen as a threat should they wish to marry/have sex with white women.

Although unstated, the element of sexual abuse of even young slave girls by masters hovered beneath the surface of Sethe's murder of her daughter.
************************************************************

Questions--What is the reference for all of this mish-mosh?

The earliest years of the English settlement? What would those be?

Considerable intermarriage? What is the meaning of considerable? 50%, 25%, 2% 1%?

The element of sexual abuse of even young slave girls by masters hovered beneath the surface of Sethe's murder of her daughter, BUT IT IS UNSTATED? How does the "cow" know?


It is clear that the "cow"knows very little about the "World the Slaves Made" by Dr, Eugene D. Geneovese( a book accepted as a classic and a landmark in the historiography of American Slavery.

quote-P. 422

"The frequent charge that the slaveowners and overseers seduced or forced most of the young, sexually attractive slave girls appears to be a great exaggeration and an injustice to blacks as well as whites. THE BIG PLANTATIONS OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA LOW COUNTRIES, FOR EXAMPLE, HAD FEW MULATTO CHILDREN, MUCH TO THE SURPRISE OF THE NORTHENERS WHO ACCOMPANIED THE UNION OCCUPATION"

Ossobuco wrote:

Knowing Dys and the breadth of his reading and understanding, I'll listen to him anytime.

Oh, wait, I'm going to see Theroux and McCarthy dumped on...


We all don't read for the same reasons. We all don't go to law school for the same reasons. Why this has to be a matter of slamming, using words like "cow" perjoratively, even if it is a poster's avatar, I don't understand,
except people like slamming instead of civil discussion.

*************
Questions- I do not doubt that you are correct about Dys' "breadth of ..readng and understanding" but I am amazed that lately all he can talk about in his two or three line posts( never with references listed) is urination.

Why should I dump on Theroux and McCarthy?

They are both good writers and, although I have not read extensively in their works, I have not found that they are propagandists like Morrison.

And, Ms. Ossobuco, I treat everyone with respect, until they disrespect me. If you really wish to understand that, you should go to my original interactions with the "cow". Then you may understand why I use a pejorative.

Thank You for your interest!!

thank you for the reference to the "World the Slaves Made" by Dr, Eugene D. Geneovese. I read it carefully and found that he indeed made some good points. However,you must realize, as I am certain that you do, that this is ONE historian writing about a complex subject and therefore, because I am an idiot, I must call him some name like ignorant or bovine, thereby, I am very much afraid, lending nothing to the conversation here.

You can probably download it from an online site.

That's why I read the book. I had to look for several weeks to find it at a used book store, which may indicate that people hang on to it. I found a copy at the Harvard Book Store, not the Harvard Coop, located across the street from the Yard.

I can't help but think that perhaps the possum has a yen for a little "bubblin' brown sugar," which may account for his ranting against Black women.

I've explained several times why I chose the avatar I did and feel no need to do so again. I am not particularly fond of it. I think cows should be treated with dignity, not photoshopped to appear to wear sunglasses and not having representations of their hide used as car seat cover fabric.

I think the writer under discussion here demeans himself when he used cow perforatively. They're useful animals that have travelled much of human history with us and given us far more than we ever gave them.

corkey -- I skimmed a little of the article about Bloom because I don't have much time now, but, Epstein sums up how academics feel about the man. No one really likes or admires him much, with the exception of our insistent poster. I feel that our poster and Bloom and the Britcom character Hyacinth Bucket would make an appropriate threesome.

Bellow
I read the list of authors and the accompanying essay when they came out. Given that it is hard to make these choices, I was disappointed that Saul Bellow didn't survive the cut. He's a favorite of mine.

I like Bellow as well. Always did. At the end of last year, I prepared some short stories for my ELL kids to read. I have to admit that while I loved the Bellow selection, I loved the Updike story more.

I think Toni Morison is one of the best writers of the Twentieth Century and those who don't like her are just racists and anti-feminists who don't want to see a black woman get a Pulitzer Prize.

I think you just described one of the most prolific posters on this thread!

And proves, once again, that volume and mass do not always measure substance.

Joe(sneering seldom, if ever, accompanies wisdom)Nation

Marion, D'Art and Joe -- I agree with all of you.