FW: Pynchon and Delany

[Tom Evans]

At 05:43 PM 6/11/96 PDT, JM wrote:
>The comparison I 
>was referring to was in _Silent Interviews_.  I didn't get the feeling that
Delany was trying to 
>put Pynchon down at all.  As I mentioned, I thought his motive for making
that particular 
>comparison was unclear.                   -jm
>
I like Delany's work, but the off the cuff remark in this interview is not
Delany at his best.  Here is the passage from _Silent Interviews_:
"_Dhalgren_ has outsold _Gravity's Rainbow_--by about 1000.000 copies: we
share a mass market publishier and statistics leak.  But _Gravity's Rainbow_
is a fantasy about a war most of its readers don't really remember, whereas
_Dhalgren_ is a fairly pointed dialogue with all the depressed and
burned-out areas of America's great cities.  To decide if _Gravity's
Rainbow_ is relevant, you have to spend time in a library--mostly with a lot
of _Time/Life_ books, which are pretty romanticized to begin with.  To see
what _Dahlgren_ is about, you only have to walk along a mile of your own
town's inner city.  So _Dahlgren_'s a bit more threatening--and accordingly
receives less formal attention."

At best the causal argument here is suspect.  There are lots of reasons
_Dhalgren_ might receive less formal attention than GR. Inner City relevance
I think would be low on the list.  I also think GR stands up pretty well on
its own.  One can read TRP's book without darkening Henry Luce's door.