Sammiches, et cetera . . . .

[pgb451 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu]

On Tues. 10/17, hartwin Alfred Gebhardt writes: 

> Of course it is. So what? 'Exclusivism' is not a dirty word. Someone 
> started this list, calling it Pynchon-l; this already broadly defines 
> the area of interest for all those who have subscribed, and excludes 
> other authors unless they are somehow related to Our Hero. (VIVA 
> PYNCHON VIVA!) 

Strange. Follow this: last week I sent a response to Linda (?) to which she
responded to this last Monday (second paragraph, the part about TRP being a
"hero."). Having not read the original response, people began discussing 
whether or not Slothrop--as well as his alter-ego--was a hero, et cetera. 
Well, this is kind of funny, as well as an interesting development. See: today
I learned how to send a group mailing and the original response was lost to a
personal mailbox. So Linda, if yer out there, you might want to copy the
message to the group because I think there's some interesting discussion in
there about TRP being a hero, blah, blah, whatever, but it certainly feeds
into this idea of exclusivism (which--I agree--is not a dirty word, 
however. . .) Anyway: 
 
> On a slightly more serious level: the question of whether one can or 
> should distinguish between 'good' writing and 'bad' writing, or between 
> 'literature' and 'pulp', always tends to come up. Personally, and 
> while not prescribing to any abolute notions of quality or the fixed
> meaning of adjectives, I certainly believe that Thomas Pynchon is 
> a better writer than Stephen King or Gore Vidal, that most romance 
> and fantasy novels 'suck', that by far the greater majority of all 
> publications are an absolute waste of 'innocent' trees, and that 
> there are entirely too many Major Marvy's in this world. In this 
> regard I am quite cheerfully exclusivist and even <gasp> elitist.
> 
> What do others think about this?


I agree with this as well. There is something to be said for hard work. And
although reading GR is a difficult task, the rewards are plentiful and
worthwhile. Perhaps there is 'good' _reading_ as there is 'bad' _reading_
(incidently, didn't Vidal say that a good book is made by the reader? sumthing
like that?). Here: my father is a lover of Tom Clancy's books and keeps trying
to push them on me (as well as "Three Days of the Condor," "Seven Days in
May," et cetera). He just got a new book by a guy named Hageburn (?), a book
about corporate espianage (sp) and the feared, clandestine Japanese invasion
of American Industry. I don't even know what it's called but critics claim 
that Clancy ought to be looking over his shoulder. Yes, yes. I immediately 
flipped to the last page wherein the 'bad guy' (singular, atop a pyramid of 
lower 'bad guys,') entrances himself in prayer and then disembowels himself
out of shame in the traditional Japanese style (as seen in "Shogun" and 
other films). Something like that. And then, there's a melodramatic paragraph
that follows, applauding the American 'good guys.' Somebody says: "You know,
we don't always get it right but we sure try." Some hugs, handshakes.

A couple of things:
	
	a) easy reading, similar to other pro-Amercan military epics where
there are good guys and bad guys (does anyone see a Platonic notion of the 
Form when complex identities are simplified?)

	b) crappy writing. boring to read. What do I mean? Well, I'm sure
at some level the story might become intriguing but does it (or will a story
of this format) adhere itself to the art of writing? I would assume not.
It think this is where the notion of exclusivism/elitism comes from. To tell
a story  and make societal criticism and convey notions of theories/ideas/
philosophies is difficult work. I believe that writing can be an art and 
the more artistically conscious the writer, the more artisically relevant 
the writing, the more artiscally conscious the reader will have to be in
order to understand what the author is saying. 

So what is art? A difficult question as well as controversial (suprise,
suprise). As for reading GR and books of it's caliber, the reader must put in
more to get more out of the novel. The reader becomes involved and the book is
raised to a higher level of interactability (is this a word?). Anyway, when we
put in a large amount of work in effort to understand something, we tend to
become a little more protective of our status on that something, whatever it
is. I think it's safe to say that as a group we expect more out of the novels
we read as well as we expect more out of ourselves as readers.

What does everybody else think?



Seany
pgb451 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu