It began as the GODFATHER OF MATH, evolved into the GOODFATHER OF MATH. Now this. Go figure...

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The kind of humor I like is the thing that makes me laugh for five seconds and think for ten minutes = G. CARLIN...Stain glass, engraved glass, frosted glass
–give me plain glass = JOHN FOWLES ... Music is the mathematics of the gods=PYTHAGORAS ... Nothing is more fluid than language = R. L. SWIHART
I cannot live without the oxygen of laughter = DAWN POWELL ... !!! ... But laughter cannot survive without the hydrogen of gravitas = PAUL OLIVERIO
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Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Why The Great American Novel Is Dead

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SIX REASONS
 
1. Marilyn Suzanne Miller
2. Joel Church-Cooper
3. Amy Sherman/Dan Palladino
4. James Burrows
5. Armando Ianucci
6. Alan Ball

BUT
Someone would 
quickly tell me
"All those people you named
are great writers"
 
I would agree with you
100%
 
And that is why
the Great American Novel
is dead
 
The reason 
tops the list
is because she wrote
the greatest
man/woman
conversation
in the history of
Saturday Night Live
 
It featured Richard Dreyfuss
and the vastly under-rated
Laraine Newman
 
What
Joel Church-Cooper
wrote for
is funny enough
to make Mark Twain
jealous but Brockmire
 is not a book
 
It is a cable TV show
 
The other names listed
 are the creators
—respectively— 
of Gilmore Girls,
Cheers, VEEP,
and Six Feet Under

Suffice it to say
that if Scott Fitzgerald
had written
The Great Gatsby
in 2021
—instead of 1927—
publishers would not 
have been
the first people
knocking 
on his door:

It would be HBO
and they would have
made an earth-shattering
mini-series
 
They would have given
Fitzgerald
so much money,
his name would 
never need to be
on the bookshelves
 
Instead of people saying
"Have you read Gatsby?"
the question would be
"Have you binge-watched Gatsby?"
 
***
 
©  PAUL OLIVERIO  ©
 
 
The next GoFather/Fitzgerald 
page is  here
 
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4 comments:

  1. What new novelists have you read in the past 5 years?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've attempted to read
      quite a few

      The best ones are not serious literature
      as much as literary amusements,
      especially George Saunders
      and Thomas Pynchon

      The smarter young novelists
      have mastered the art
      of sexually appeasing
      the literary critics
      as much as necessary
      for the latter to write in
      The New York Review of Books
      that he/she has seen God

      I don't think there is an American writer
      capable of shining the shoes of
      the magnificent Jenny Erpenbeck

      She is alive and well
      but she is also from
      the former "East Germany"

      However, I would never have read her
      if it weren't for NYRB


      Delete
    2. If he had never touched a guitar,
      Bob Dylan could have written
      the Great American Novel.

      Delete
    3. Exactly

      Ditto for Loudon Wainwright,
      Phil Ochs, Warren Zevon, John Sebastian...

      Or if you think piano: Billy Joel, Tom Lehrer,
      Mark Russell...

      Or voice: Oscar Brown, Jon Stewart,
      George Carlin...

      Delete