This One's For D.G .Myers

D. G. Myers at the estimable Commonplace Blog (definitely worth an eyeball) has been (grumping over?) (marvelling at?) the recalcitrance of a student in his Philip Roth seminar. Myers clearly admires Roth; the student professes that he does not, although it is hard to tell just how he would know because there is little or no evidence that he ever read any. Myers is dismayed. He might take solace from the observation that he is not alone:

A disobedient youth is no longer in fear of his schoolmaster--the relation is rather one of indifference in which schoolmaster and pupil discuss how a good school should be run. To go to school no longer means being in fear of the master, or merely to learn, but rather implies being interested in the problem of education.

So Søren Kierkegaard in The Present Age, which might be the best thing he ever wrote (though I probably haven't read enough to judge). And while I am on a roll:

It is said that two English noblemen were once riding along a road when they met a man whose horse had run away with him and who, being in danger of falling off, shouted for help. One of the Englishmen turned to the other and said, 'a hundred guineas he falls off.' 'Taken,' said the other. With that they spurred their horses to a gallop and hurried on ahead to open the toll-gates and to prevent anything from getting in the way fo the runaway horse. In the same way, though without thaat heroic and millionaire-like spleen, our own reflective and sensible age is like a curious, critical and worldy-wise person who, at the most, has vitality enough to lay a wager.

Source: Harper Torchbook 1962 edition, pp 45 and 78. At 44 he adds: "the whole age becomes a committee."

Booklist

Thanks (again) to Patrick Kurp (link), this time for putting me onto D.G. Myers, and in particular this remarkable new "best fiction" list (link). I like it because it includes stuff that I (a) actually read; or (b) think I might actually want to read. I'm not nearly as well schooled on this topic as Myers (or Kurp), but I've read with great pleasure and profit, e.g., Bernard Malamud, J.F. Powers, Flannery O'Conner, Raymond Carver, Stanley Elkin and Saul Bellow. I enjoyed the Cheever stories when I was young, and Portnoy (snigger snigger). And what a pleasure to find that I don't need to apologize for reading Christopher Buckley. The only choice that seems to me to misfire is Eudora Welty: I've tried, but she just leaves me cold. But in general, his judgment is so good that I am emboldened to go back and try people that I thought I could safely overlook (Paul Auster), or even those I had been actively evading (Philip K. Dick). And I must say I do think he is wrong to exclude Marilynne Robinson.

There's an interesting followup post here, in which Myers responds to Kurp (with a fully justified salute to Cynthia Ozick). Indeed, I think the whole blog belongs in the aggregator.

Afterthought: Unless I missed it Myers nor Kurp nominated this woman. But cf. link. [And: okay, Canadian, right.]