Monday, January 14, 2008

Soon, when I reach the endpaper of my current read, the stage will be set for the life and times of Mark Twain, as told by the man himself through pages awash in wit and semicolons. This will complete my literary sandwich–a meaty title followed by lighter fare followed by another meaty title–and prime the canvas for the next triumvirate.

To backtrack a bit, though, and actually recount things sequentially, the first substantive title was A Confederacy of Dunces, which was a choice work or, in the parlance of professional critique, a blazing, rip-roaring comedic thrillfest guaranteed to grab the edge of your seat and rock it. It’s a fiction produced in a sad and fascinating context. It’s a Pulitzer winner that deserved to win.

One topic we’ll revisit this year is this idea of greatness. How do you produce a great work? How many people, if any, need to deem it great to confer quality upon it? How much time needs to elapse for something to be certifiably good? How do you distinguish true greatness from delusion? These are by no means new questions, and I imagine the Greek thinkers of old have volumes of insight to share, but until they can deliver a bound five-page digest on my desk every Tuesday morning, well, we’ll just have to answer the questions ourselves.