The article about Thomas Wolfe that I recently linked quotes a diehard
Wolfean, Richard Kennedy, to the effect that we degenerate computerized
moderns just can't handle long books like the kind Wolfe wrote. But have
you visited a shopping mall lately? In the Waldenbooks the bestsellers are
a thousand pages long, and in the multiplex the movies take three hours.
 
So let's not blame our habits of technology  for the eclipse of Williams,
if eclipse there is. In _Rezeptionsgeschichte_ these things happen, and the
mysteries are always multiple and sometimes profound. Wolfe's _Look
Homeward, Angel_ is long and bad and Fitzgerald's _This Side of Paradise_
is short and bad, but in their time both books satisfied a social need that
looked, while it lasted, like aesthetic desire. And of course the same
thing happens to other books and other readerships. When was the last time
you read any of the _Four Quartets_, let alone _The Cocktail Party_? You
know about Melville and Faulkner, but were you aware that Karl Shapiro is
still alive and still writing?
 
And what in the world will our grandchildren ask us about Norman Mailer?
Stand by for embarrassment in a few years' time, but don't feel bad about
your computer now.
 
Jonathan Morse