Eco vs Pynchon

[Henry Musikar]

This has begun to make me think of the Rossini vs. Webern argument in 
GR. Yes, Eco "does something intelligent," but is intelligence all 
that we admire/enjoy in a writer. I/was Brando an "intelligent" 
actor?

On 23 Oct 96 at 15:15, Craig Clark wrote:

> From:          "Craig Clark" <CLARK at SHEPFS2.UND.AC.ZA>
> To:            pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date:          Wed, 23 Oct 1996 15:15:06 GMT+0200
> Subject:       Eco vs Pynchon
> Priority:      normal

> Personally I quite enjoy Umberto Umberto, though I think he is (at
> least in translation) a vastly inferior novelist to Pynchon. That's
> probably not saying much - I think everyone is inferior to Pynchon -
> but this was never made more apparent to me than when I tried a few
> months ago to read _The Island of the Day Before_ just after
> finishing re-reading _Gravity's Rainbow_. I found _Island_ quite
> frankly self-consciously clever and rather flat after _GR_, and I
> abandoned it a few chapters in to re-read _V._ instead. On the other
> hand, let's not deny that Eco is one of the few writers around who
> is trying to do something intelligent with the novel. And his
> parodies, as contained in the volume _Misreadings_, are brilliant.
> 
> 
> 
> Craig Clark
> 
> "Living inside the system is like driving across
> the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
> on suicide."
>    - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
> 

Keep Cool, but care. -- TRP
http://www.nicom.com/~gravity