Vidal

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu writes:
> Andrew writes Re: Vidal--
> <long snip>
>  >and that's irrespective of the fine
> >qualities of his essays, historical fantasies on Burr, Lincoln etc or
> >his fer real lit criticism.

> I didn't know there was a big Vidal war on, since I am too busy to
> breathe, . . .

Err, I write a comment like the one you cite and there's a big Vidal
war on? I think you ought to learn to present your opponents' position
a little more negatively if you hope to raise some of them there war
bonds from your admiring public. Still, if you ask for it . . .

    Of course you know . . . this means war!

> . . . but just to complicate things--I really admire Vidal's
> fiction, I think LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA and DULUTH were really fine
> reads, granting that they are *novels of ideas* (and thus a category
> below, presumably, the stuff we get from writers like TP). . . .

Well, they are not in the set I have read, so . . . I am perfectly
qualified to rubbish them and you into the bargain (all's fair in love
and war, nix?). I'll stick to the novels I have read and suggest that
their structure is formulaic; the scale of their ambitions is, as you
say, that of an apprentice piece, a miniature exercise in the
carpentry of ideas; the flow of the narrative is like an apprentice's
piece - all the rough joints on display; and the prose is clumsy and
contrived; a great expense for the purchase of such small witticisms
and satires as Vidal manages.

> I also reject Vidal's dismissive comments on Pynch.  But I find no
> cognitive dissonance in these positions.

I am not sure I would know where to find my cognitive dissonance from
my elbow. Is that a technical (dare I say it `academic') term? Or are
you just slaughtering the bovine by way of appeasing our shared
addiction to ringing phrases? Some of what Vidal says is incisive.
Some makes him sound like a klutz. Overall I suspect any claim on
Vidal's part to any deep knowledge of Pynchon or the type of writing
Pynchon produces.

> BTW, Andrew, I don't think *historical fantasies* is fair.  These
> are considered some of the best historical *novels* of the 2oth c.
> Historical novels are a legitimate genre, no?  (War and Peace was
> one, wasn't it?).

I've no desire to split hairs of nomenclature. I should have said
fictions in place of fantasies. More the impression I intended to
give.


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