DFW

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Alan Joyce writes (Re: DFW and _IJ_):
> The book's long and (slightly) complicated,
> but struck me as ultimately unfulfilling and not nearly as knowledgeable
> or rich as a Pynchon novel -- hell, I'd rather read "Vineland" again. 
> 
> I wonder if the over-enthusiastic reviews are a result of desperation on
> the part of critics who want to be the first to identify a "modern master"
> and who react like slobbering hounds to any thick contemporary tome that
> smacks of postmodernism, or if it just comes from the fact that nobody
> seems to have read more than the first hundred pages, which are admittedly
> not too bad. Unfortunately, the subsequent 900 leave much to be desired... 
> 
> Or am I just so much of a Pynchon devotee that I would automatically react
> this way against any author compared to him? 

Yes on all counts - I haven't made it past page 250 myself.  I had the
same reaction to all the Pynchon comparisons of both Delillo and
Wallace. They're somewhat enjoyable, but nowhere near as interesting or
powerful as TRP and the comparisons are kind of annoying. I've been
trying to read _Mao II_ for the past one year - I keep taking it out of
the library and returning it after finding my place and reading about 25
pages - I just can't bring myself to care. Delillo's upcoming tome
sounds promising, though.

As for most critics, they seem to find Pynchon interesting only for the
postmodern quality of his fiction and not really for his concerns and
themes - they somehow come across as wanting to empty his books of all
meaningful content and just admire the surface (or don't pay any
attention to what he's saying because they can't get past the surface).
Which is the postmodern condition, I suppose, but it's still a pity.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
"There is a war between the rich and poor,
     a war between the man and the woman
 There is a war between the ones who say there's a war
     and the ones who say there isn't
 Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in!
 Why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning." - Leonard Cohen