a little something on the Salinger Mailing List

[D.]

Here's a little something that I figured my fellow WASTErs would enjoy:


Return-Path: <owner-bananafish at cassatt.Mass-USR.COM>
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 09:17:35 -0600
From: Patti Larrabee <Patti.Larrabee at hsc.utah.edu>
Subject: Pynchon
To: bananafish at cassatt.Mass-USR.COM, Malcolm at wolfenet.com
Content-disposition: inline
Sender: owner-bananafish at cassatt.Mass-USR.COM
Reply-To: bananafish at cassatt.Mass-USR.COM

London Times, May 30, 1997

Trendy New Yorkers lap up cult writer's indigestible
novel

FROM TUNKU VARADARAJAN IN NEW YORK

  IT could be described as the book everyone
  is wearing. Mason & Dixon, the almost
  incomprehensible new novel by Thomas
  Pynchon, has become the latest American
  fashion accessory.

  The 773-page monster is poised near the
  pinnacle of the bestseller lists, as thousands
  of buyers flock to bookshops in search of the
  latest intellectual bauble. More than $200,000
  (#125,000) has been spent by Henry Holt and Co,
  the publishers, on selling the book, and their
  investment appears to have paid off. The first
  print run of 175,000 - astonishingly large for a
  book as dense as a Mississippi swamp - could be
  sold out by the middle of next month, a mere six
  weeks after its first appearance.

  Wry observers, however, attribute Mason &
  Dixon's success to its unreadability. Melik
  Kaylan, a former editor at Spy magazine,
  describes the book as "a 1990s version of The
  Name of the Rose". He said: "New York's literary
  nomenklatura want to be seen carrying worthy
  books ... Umberto Eco served people's needs
  admirably in the last decade, what with the
  generous infusions of Latin in his text.
  Pynchon, too, is great for posing with ...
  perfect for women who spend their whole day
  draped languidly over a chair at the Museum of
  Modern Art's cafe with a book perched on their
  knees."

  Another cynic remarked: "People enjoy
  holding up their fat new book and saying,
  'Like my new dustjacket'?"

  The book's publishers have not been blind
  to the cachet lurking in abstruse prose.
  Although Cathy Melnicki, the publicist at
  Holt, describes Mason & Dixon as "a really
  accessible, kind of familiar,
  two-guys-go-into-the woods story", she was
  careful to emphasise that "reading Pynchon
  makes people feel smart".

  The book tells the story of the men behind
  the Mason-Dixon Line, which once divided
  the so-called "free states" from the slave
  states in America, and which now serves as
  a useful metaphor for the boundary between
  the Enlightened North and the Deep South.
  It is a thinking man's "buddies tale",
  charting the relationship between two
  Englishmen, Charles Mason, an astronomer,
  and Jeremiah Dixon, a surveyor. Other
  characters include Benjamin Franklin,
  George Washington, Samuel Johnson, a
  Chinese feng shui master, a Swedish
  irredentist, a robot duck and a talking dog.

  Pynchon is puzzling to read, but not as
  puzzling as he is in real life. Sixty years old,
  and rated by many as among the finest living
  novelists in English, he is one of America's
  most reclusive writers. His alienated view of
  the world rivals that of J.D. Salinger, the
  author of The Catcher in the Rye, and he has
  fought publicity throughout his life.

  On this occasion, however, he has offered
  his publishers more co-operation than ever
  before, giving his approval to book launch
  parties and other essentially
  non-Pynchonian frivolities. He did not even
  object to the holding of a "Thomas Pynchon
  lookalike contest" to mark the publication of
  the book on April 30.

-------------
Trendy New Yorkers, indeed


I found this article mildly amusing and more than mildly
condescending...how about you?


D.