DFW

[hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

On Thu, 19 Dec 1996, Murthy Yenamandra wrote:
> 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).

I've seen this done to other writers, but as to Pynchon, I have to disagree. 
My impression is that *great* majority of all Pynchon criticism has been
"thematic" rather than "formalistic". Avant-garde people like Klinkowitz and 
Brooke-Rose have even complained that Pynchon is not "experimental" enough. 
This centrifugal formalism is just an unhappy antithesis to centripetal
thematicism in my opinion.

Heikki