Comments on: The Rumpus Interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan

By: Chris Roberts's Conscience

Chris Roberts's Conscience — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:38:56 +0000

When I wrote the post above, I should explain that I had been taken captive by the very Tea Party members about whom Sullivan wrote so memorably in Pulphead. These disgruntled extremists, laid bare by Sullivan’s masterful powers as reporter and commentator and narrator, had a gun to the head of my favorite stuffed animal (Poo-Poo-Kittykins) and I rightly feared for her plush life. Liberated at last, I write to append, to my miserly and misleading comment, the following full retraction. Only a fool would think that “Mister Lytle” is anything but what it is: one of the most beautiful—and singular—examples of essaistic practice I’ve ever encountered. It’s envy-making good, and that fact alone would explain why my comment above could seem plausibly the product of a person not being held captive by hostile individuals but by a consciousness hostile to beauty because of its inability, itself, to craft beauty. Thank goodness I am now free to redress the wrong the above so clearly does to Sullivan and, moreover, to myself.

By: Chris Roberts

Chris Roberts — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:15:34 +0000

Author John Jeremiah Sullivan amply displays the one, two…four too many essays theory in his “Mister Lytle.” It is spirit breakingly (new word) insular and it reads/grates across the mind like a punishment, a breach of the author-reader pact. Sullivan also serves to prove my maxim that there are no great writers, only great concepts unrealized.

By: scott mcclanahan

scott mcclanahan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:41:03 +0000

I really loved this interview guys. Great questions, Greg.

By: kevin spaide

kevin spaide — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:50:39 +0000

Good interview. Makes me want to read the book – I love the sentence quoted at the beginning – and also go back to Guy Davenport who I haven’t read in years.