out from the shadows...

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, Christopher James Tassava wrote:

> 
> 	What are the basis of these negative reviews of Pynchon's work?  
> Do they go after Tom's style, his substance, his "message", or what?  Any 
> insights and/or directions to the critical criticism would be greatly 
> appreciated.


GR is criticized as belonging to that category of writing known as 
the university novel--books written not to be read but to be taught. Many 
otherwise literate people find GR too murky to undertake without, say, 
the GR Companion. Gore Vidal is one famous exponent of this theory. 

Additionally, Vidal doesn't like Pynchon's prose. "To my ear,
the prose is pretty bad, full of all the rattle and buzz that were in the 
air when the author was growing up, an era in which only the television
commercial was demonically  acquiring energy, leaked to it by a declining
Western civilization. . . rattles on and on, broken by occasional lengthy 
songs every bit as bad, lyrically, as those of Bob Dylan."

Vidal doesn't much like the message either, particularly as it is
reflected in the von Braun epigram. "Braun believes 'in the continuity of 
our spiritual existence after death'. . . This quasi-Hindu sentiment is 
beguiling and conforting . . . Personally, I find it somber indeed to 
think that individual personality goes on and on beyond zero, time. But
I am in the minority: this generation of Americans is god-hungry and 
craves reassurance of personal immortality. . . "

The next sentence get a little nasty and, since it was written twenty
years ago and may not reflect current thinking, I won't repeat it.

Vidal has one thing (he considers) nice to say about P. ". . . one can 
applaud his deliberate ascent from Academe . . . " Reference to
the fact that P does not teach in a university.

Here is plainly _one_ V Stencil is not in search of. 

The above comes from NY Review of Books, July 15, 1976.

					P.