Exhaustion

[Byrnes Weir]

At 01:17 PM 12/7/96 -0700, Steelhead wrote:
>Grant from Newcastle, a fellow Seamus Heaney fan, continues the parry:
>
>>>I don't like Barth all that much, but the Sotweed Factor was hardly stale.
>>But that was my point.
>
>Then I misunderstood the thrust of your argument. I thought you were saying
>that Pynchon would write a more invigorating parody of an 18th century
>novel about Maryland than Barth. My question is why another parody, when
>its already been done so perfectly. I know next to nothing about literary
>history. Indeed, I am barely literate by post-modernist standards. But
>wasn't Laurence Sterne writing parodies of these things back in the
>1760s--give or take a decade or two.
>
>>What Barth was saying in the Literature of Exhaustion was that if the novel
>>is dead or if literature is exhausted, he can write books about that.
>
>And that was a profound thought, wasn't it? Did he write that before or
>after Beckett wrote Watt. Barth is mainly a professor, writing about
>writing about writing. The Sotweed Factor, Chimera, and Floating Opera were
>good books. But for the past twenty years Barth's been the biggest bore on
>the eastern seaboard.
>
>Some critic of Pynchon's--Tony Tanner, I think--once said that he read the
>final paragraphs of Gravity's Rainbow as a secret message that TRP would
>never write again for publication. I hope Tanner's right. Indeed, I believe
>he is right. Pynchon didn't write the awful Vineland. It was actually
>written by Wanda Tinasky. Pynchon's been dead for many years. Those hit
>squads that got Farina caught up with Tom back in the late 70s. That photo
>in New York magazine looked nothing like TRP. This forthcoming book is a
>hoax. It was actually a collaborative effort between Steve Erickson and Ron
>Rosenbaum.
>
>Steely
>
>A vacuum of need
>Collapsed each hunting heart
>But tremulously we held
>As hawk and prey apart,
>Preserved classic decorum,
>Deployed our talk with art.
>
>Seamus Heaney
>from "Twice Shy"
>
>
>
>
>
      i agree...Barth was a one novel man...you can se him in the floating


            opera



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