Of Pynchon's Difficultness

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

Craig Clark suggests:
" . . . the list is damn near endless, but the point                     
is that we're conditioned in fiction not to expect such things. A
Well-Made Novel, we have been told, has clearly focussed narrative,
unity of form and tone, and characters with "real" "psychological"
depth.
 
Undoubtedly the history of 20th Century fiction has been about
breaking down these preconceptions, but TRP takes it further - I
believe MUCH further - than anyone else. We're not used to reading
texts that take this form, therefore we find _GR_ difficult."


This seems correct to me.  I think I should add that the times in literary
fashion have shifted.  Where literature students once *expected* to find
the "difficulty" that T.S. Eliot demanded in poetry (and other literature),
much contemporary lit. tends to lay everything on the line.  Thus, I found
that students who might be attracted to Pynchon still have little to
get from him (while there *are* still some who are looking for his brand of
strangeness and mixture of modes--but they are few and far between).

Perhaps the situation was summed up by the student who said she had liked
Faulkner's "The Bear" but was "disappointed" by THE SOUND AND THE FURY!

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)