The Last Word on Vidal

[Rodney Welch]

Rodney Welch wrote:
> 
> Andrew Dinn states:
> > I find V's comment that the prose is `kinda ordinary' something of a
> > critical shot in the foot. To me Pynchon's prose is extraordinary in
> > the extreme.
> 
> So it would seem to me -- what was interesting about Vidal's comment was that he said it
> was (pardon me for not quoting precisely) standard American vernacular. He connected
> Pynchon's prose style to comic books and television, which I thought was interesting,
> and difficult, just now, for me to counteract.
> 
> Andrew:
>  The entropy stuff is neither here nor there. If Pynchon's
> > work really depended upon it don't you think he would have done more
> > than sketch it out based on second hand knowledge? Entropy only came
> > to prominence because i) he published a (relative to his other works)
> > bad book which gave it undue prominence and ii) it's easy for critics
> > to grasp at and build theories on, rather like LudWit's notion of
> > `family resemblance' was blown out of proportion by later
> > philosophers. A critical appraisal imbalanced enough to promote this
> > theme as central suggests to me that this is one critic who really has
> > not `got' the idea at all.
> > Me: Perhaps, but he made a noble try -- and that in itself is not bad criticism. One of
> my favorite critical pieces of all time is John Updike's review of Nabokov's Transparent
> Things. Somewhere in the first paragraph he says "I didn't get it." Which is, really,
> just fine -- I like it when a critic speaks the truth. (I wish to God I had a copy of
> "Self-Reliance" within reach -- what was it RWE said about speaking your own heart?)
>     I'm not trying to argue that Vidal's essay is vital to understanding Pynchon; but I
> do believe it is valuable as another, opposing view. If there were a textbook, say, of
> postmodernist literature, I would include Vidal's essay just to mix it up a little, and
> to let off whatever steam may be gathering in a befuddled student's brain.
> 
>         You state that Vidal's "comments revealed little insight and thence I concluded
> he had not read Pynchon very well." Again, I do not think his prose smacks of
> insincerity much as I, or you, may disagree with his conclusions.
> 
>         I do not agree that your comments on Vidal's novels --  formulaic, low ambition,
> apprentice work, "a miniature exercise in the carpentry of ideas," yadda yadda yadda --
> are precise. Change the name and you have a made-to-order description of anyone from
> John O'Hara to Bret Easton Ellis.