DeLillo, Pinecone, & Kesey

[Steelhead]

Richard Romeo, coordinator of the cooperating collections at the Foundation
Center (but it's the uncooperative foundations--like Kaplan--that we should
worry about, n'est pas?) asks, demurely as always:

>Mr. S.  Please explain Delillo's "coasting"--you talkin mellower, less
>ambitious, phony, what? and" Pynchon's terrain--stopped publishing to
>play Tom Pinecone"--you sayin' what here?--he had nuthin to say, lost
>something (maybe his mind) , living on his laurels, writer's block?

On DeLillo's coasting: I think his early books, Ratner's Star, Great Jones
Street, Players, End Zone, where more radical, more immediate, and riskier
books. Starting with the Names, DeLillo decided to be a Major Writer--which
he was before, although he didn't write like one--and lost his edge. Libra
was a shameless attempt to cash in on the Kennedy Assassination and was
much less interesting than Mailer or Ollie Stone on this topice, while
White Noise and Mao II were highly praised by the NY critics for precisely
the reasons you would expect them to praise the works, their dealings with
academia, postmodernism, the plight of the writer in a world that lacks
serious readers, etc. I hope DeLillo relocates his roots and produces more
good, but small works. But I fear he has gone over the edge with Robert
Stone.

As for Pynchon there are two theories. Chuck Hollander believes he was
hiding out from assassins, real or imagined. Not an unlikely hypothesis.
But I tend toward the view--based on the text of Vineland--that Pynchon was
in the throws of severe alcohol and drug addiction and withdrawals and
lacked Burroughs's and Bukowski's ability to produce under these
conditions. Same thing afflicted Kesey. Though he has come back to write
two excellent books: Sailor's Song and his and Babb's book on the Pendleton
Round Up.

Steely