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[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Thomas Vieth writes:
> It wouldn't at all be possible for me two rank TRP's works - maybe with 
> one exception: "Slow Learner" with his early stories which are nice tries 
> but nothing more than that. His novel can be "configurated", though, in 
> such a way:

>               The Mythologicals:             The Subculturals:
>               V.                             The Crying Of Lot 49
>               Gravity's Rainbow              Vineland

I too have been pondering this divide recently. The obviou squestion
is which side does M&D fall into. Answer maybe is both. Like the
Subculturals it deals with (US) America and (US) American culture.
Like the Mythologicals it deals with World rather than US history,
particularly concentrating on the European Empires. And perhaps this
is fitting since its time frame is the schism, the divide, the fork,
one might even say the V-fork in the history of Empire when the (US)
American Empire began to assert its independence. GR covers America's
coming of age during the last Great War of Empire. V contrasts
America's Cold War stagnation with the stabilising wars of its
precursor Empires, the Fashoda crisis, von Trotha's genocide etc. Does
M&D not present the American Empire in embryo? In other words is this
not a progression backwards in the history of the US Empire in its
relation to the outside world. Whereas the Subculturals are a forward
progression in the history of the internal workings of the US Empire.

And perhaps that is why the Mythologicals ought to be considered as
the V books (or even the V and A books) since they present this
divergence of control between Europe and the US Empires (to justify
the A, maybe they also represent the convergence of Empires post WWII
into a single US Empire dominating all the world, including its
progenitor, Europe).

While waiting for M&D to arrive I read 3 more of Don DeLillo's books,
Libra, Americana and Running Dog. All of them are brilliant and
althoguh I would not say they were better than the other 4 I have read
(The Names, Ratner's Star, White Noise and another one) they are all
extremely interesting and brilliantly written. In particular they
occupy the same shelf space as Pynchon's Subculturals. Even where they
deal with the world outside the US they still present it as seen by
American eyes e.g. in The Names we see the Middle and Far East from
the point of view of a risk assessor for a US company (unspecified and
very likely to be a front or at least a feed for the CIA).

And what I noticed most of all was the strong resemblance between
DeLillo's paranoid (or maybe not so paranoid) theories about the state
of the US government, morality, social order, etc etc and Pynchon's
equally wacky analysis. Even to the point that they often share the
same language and jargon, the same tropes, the same raw data.

So, in answer to the question what is he writing now, perhaps that
book on the Internet may well indeed be the next one on offer (if we
get anything at all, that is). Expect the next logical progression in
the Subculturals line to be a blockbuster full of cypherpunks,
firewall raiding, private routers, public key encryption, FBI snoops
and CIA agents provocateurs with gender bending noms de net, cyberporn
and electronic stalkers. Remember you heard it here first (and don't
forget to cite my name this time).


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.