PYNCHON IN PULSE

[Murthy Yenamandra]

In a previous message Steelhead writes:
> Jody concludes: "My perceptions of Pynchon's feelings for humanity as
> expressed in GR were reaffirmed in Vineland." No argument. But if that's
> all we're after wouldn't we be better served by reading the sermons of Desmond
> Tutu, the wonderful jailhouse diary of Ken Saro-Wiwa (murdered last year by
> the Nigerian military dictatorship at the behest of Shell--fucking--Oil) or
> the writings of Rigoberta Menshu?

Why depend on one writer (good as Pynchon is) for your entire
world-view? Why not read them all, without wishing one were like the
others?

> Of course, the reviews weren't all bad. That quick change artist, Salman
> Rushdie sent in a front page review for the NYT Book Review, praising
> Vineland for, among other things, its political content. Pynchon came home,
> Rushdie wrote, to write an accesible novel about what we've doing to our
> country, our politics, and our children these many years. But does Vineland
> really work as a political novel? If it does, it doesn't dig very deep into
> what was going on in the quarter century between Nixon and Ray-Gun.

I think it actually digs deeper than Nixon and Reagan. And I find
Rushdie's comments quoted above right on target. While it's easy to
blame this or that politician for the ills of the quarter century
(though that's certainly not the first time those ills made an
appearance), it is a natural continuation of _GR_ to turn one's
attention from an analysis of Them to an analysis of Us, which is what
Vineland tries to do. I don't think They changed a whole lot since _GR_,
but We have changed a little.

> Certainly it doesn't display the sophisticated political analysis you find
> in Robert Stone (A Flag
> for Sunrise), anything by Ward Just, Jayne Anne Phillips, Margaret
> Atwood, Carlos Fuentes (who, I've come to believe, is TRP's near equal, I
> mean check out a Change of Skin or Terra Nostra), John LeCarre, or even
> Rushdie himself, whose incredible The Moor's Last Sigh has received nary a
> mention on this list--passed over, I guess, in favor of all the hype about
> that awful pretender DF Wallace.

Sophisticated political analysis has its place, but not all novels need
to do that. Sophistication has many forms, as well.

All IMHO, of course.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. Email: yenamand at cs.umn.edu
   "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
    swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the
    wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour  
    to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all ..."