Gore's rosebud

[Craig Clark]

Rodney Welch opines:

  > I'm not sure whether or not I meant to imply that you have no 
  > right to an opinion. What I was responding to, more than 
  > anything, was the creeping sense of juvenile smugness that had 
  > crept into these anti-Vidal flames. 
Let me start by observing that Welch clearly has difficulty distinguishing a critique of 
Vidal from an "anti-Vidal flame". This is a subtle distinction which would appear to 
elude Welch, who occupies a Manichaean world in which one either hangs on every 
word that Vidal says, or one loathes and despises Vidal. However, the rest of us, who 
are accustomed to seeing the world in the full technicolour of the Rainbow, will all 
agree that it is possible to make the statement that Vidal is a lesser figure than Pynchon 
without being guilty of anti-Vidalism. Note that I have nowhere implied that Vidal is a 
bad novelist, or a bad critic, essayist or social commentator, merely that, in my 
experience, he is not as good a novelist as Pynchon; and that his criticism of Pynchon 
appears, from what has been reported on this list, to be based on an assumption which 
is questionable (that Pynchon writes *only* for the academy).
  
  > Both you and Mr. Maas seemed to share this vastly ignorant belief 
  > that you are more capable of understanding Pynchon than Vidal. If 
  > your comments amounted to anything more than a momentary snit -- 
  > if your comments had substance to them, that is -- I wouldn't 
  > have complained. Alas, they did not, thereby raising comparisons 
  > between you two and Vidal: man of letters and recognized 
  > achievement versus a coupla white kids sittin' around talkin', or 
  > surfin', or whatever it is you two do. 
I cannot speak for Steve Maas, but since you feel entitled to draw inferences about me 
from the posts I make, please allow me to correct you. I do not sit around talking or 
surfing: I work as a researcher for a non-governmental organisation (yes, one based at 
a university!) engaged in housing delivery projects in post-apartheid South Africa. I am 
34 years old (if that makes me a kid in your eyes, so be it). As far as being qualified to 
comment on Pynchon is concerned, I hold a Master's degree, cum laude, for a 
dissertation on Pynchon's fiction. This may not make me necessarily more qualified 
than Vidal to understand Pynchon, but it certainly suggests that I am in a position to 
engage with Pynchon's texts and with criticism of Pynchon's texts. 
 
I may not be "a man of letters and recognised achievement", but in no way does this 
invalidate my criticism of Vidal, any more than Vidal's status as "a man of letters and 
recognised achievement" implies that Vidal can say or do no wrong. Men of letters 
and recognised achievement have made mistakes, and been corrected, before Vidal. 
Welch's comments here seem finally premised (despite his disavowal of this in one of 
his earlier posts) on a respect for Vidal as a Supreme Authority, beyond question and 
above criticism. 
 
  >   And now, today, comes this highly amusing new post in which you 
  > lecture Vidal -- and by extension all of us -- on how to read. 
  > Reading Pynchon "requires disciplined and informed reading, of 
  > the kind usually (but not exclusively) associated with the 
  > academy," we are told, which "suggests that Vidal hasn't come 
  > fully to grip with the force of Pynchon's critique of 
  > contemporary society." 
  >    Hmm. Let me see if I have this straight. Vidal -- who has 
  > probably done more than anyone to explain Italo Calvino to the 
  > Western World, and who introduced me to the multiple complexities 
  > of Michel de Montaigne -- was a poor reader of GR? Just scanned 
  > it, did he? Gee; seems to me he read it rather carefully, if not 
  > as happily as the rest of us.  
I don't recall lecturing Vidal on how to read. I disagreed with a comment of Vidal's 
that had been reported on the list, to wit that Pynchon is one of those novelists who 
pitches his work solely at the academy (and is thereby a lesser novelist for it). If Vidal 
has indeed made this comment, then Vidal has misread Pynchon. I see no evidence 
that Pynchon intends his work for the academy alone, either in the texts themselves or 
in Pynchon's interaction (or rather, total lack thereof) with the academy since he 
started publishing. Quite frankly, such a statement, coming as it does from "a man of 
letters and recognised achievement" such as Vidal, is indicative of either a failure to 
engage with Pynchon's texts and with the relationship Pynchon bears to world 
literature, or of "sour grapes" on Vidal's behalf, that he is not the novelist Pynchon is. 
 
  > No matter -- what's really 
  > interesting about the above statement is this worshipful, knee- 
  > scraping sense of awe before "the academy," suggesting a youth 
  > who is stuck in it (or wishes to be stuck in it) with no desire 
  > to ever leave. 
For your information: I left the academy once I had finished my studies. I worked 
outside the academy. I later returned to the academy. I plan to leave the academy again 
at some point in the near future. I just thought some facts might raise the tone of this 
discussion somewhat. 
 
  >    "It is the essence of [Pynchon's] critique," Clark continues, 
  > "that the world we live is complex and multiple-layered (with the 
  > crucial decisions which affect us all being taken at levels 
  > deliberately concealed from plain sight)." 
  >    (Aha! So you're the one who stole my copy of "How to Discuss 
  > Pynchon at a Cocktail Party"!) Again, Clark's color-by-number 
  > analysis isn't nearly as interesting as this eerily prayerful 
  > statements that follow: "... complex and multiple-layered 
  > readings (such as those associated, though not exclusively, with 
  > the academy) are essential ..." 
  >     Oh, I see. These books "associated, though not exclusively, with 
  > the academy" -- are them those real smart books fer all yoo 
  > college ed-yoo-cated pai-pul? Dang. Here at the farm all we've 
  > gawt is that Critique uh Pyoor Reezon and Principia Mathuhmatica 
  > or some dumb shit -- I cain't hardly ruhmember the title since we 
  > stuffed it into thuh walls fer insulation. I shore wish the 
  > bookmobile would come by again with them books "associated, 
  > though not exclusively, with the academy." Last week we had to 
  > use the TV Guide fer toilet paper and dang if I dint miss Wall 
  > Street Week. Shit eef it don't make yuh question yer whole raison 
  > detter. 
Welch here shows his inability to read a text closely. There is a difference between a 
*manner of reading associated, though not exclusively, with the academy* (which is 
what I was writing about) and *books associated, though not exclusively, with the 
academy* (which is what Welch thinks I was writing about). It's a sloppy mistake. For 
the record: I do not claim any inherent superiority for the academy, and (as is evident 
from what I said) I acknowledge that valid readings of Pynchon (and other writers) are 
quite possible from outside the academy. Many of the most interesting, insightful and 
perceptive comments on this list are from those who are not academics; and many are 
from those who are. In itself this would seem to suggest that Vidal's critique is flawed. 
 
  > There's a certain naivete at work here, and I'll try to attack it 
  > as well as I can (pardon me if I doze; this is a most 
  > uninteresting battle.) 
Ah, you're sleepy. Well, that explains why you can't distinguish between a criticism of 
Vidal and an anti-Vidal flame, or between books written only for the academy and 
readings associated, though not exclusively, with the academy.
  
  > First of all, I don't think it's fair -- or true or just or 
  > honest -- to say that Vidal has "failed" to produce fictions to 
  > match Pynchon's. True, he hasn't produced them; he hasn't tried. 
  > He's not a novelist of genius; he's a novelist of talent -- at 
  > least, that's my experience with him. (I haven't read _Duluth_ or 
  > _Live from Golgotha_, both presumably more experimental.) This 
  > doesn't mean his work isn't vital or interesting, or even that it 
  > isn't often preferable to Pynchon, just as Pynchon is often 
  > preferable to Joyce and Joyce is sometimes preferable to Rabelais 
  > and just about anything is preferable to William Gass's The 
  > Tunnel. 
Go grab a cup of strong coffee and re-read my original post, will you? Did you see 
anywhere a claim that Vidal isn't vital or interesting? Seriously, Rodney, there is an 
enormous distinction between saying that Vidal has not produced fictions of 
complexity comparable to Pynchon's and saying that Vidal is neither interesting nor 
vital. When that bookwagon next comes by, get yourself an elementary text on logic. 
As far as the relative merits of Vidal, Pynchon, Joyce, Rabelais and Gass are 
concerned, that's your opinion, and you're welcome to it. 
 
  > Your final statement says it all -- you basically think modern 
  > fiction isn't too much older than you are, right? The tradition 
  > of Hawthorne, Melville, James and Twain were just warm-ups for TP, 
  > huh? Well, it's hard to argue with hidebound academic thinking, 
  > but I'll leave it at this: ALL truly great books -- and even most 
  > okay books, and a great many of Vidal's books -- require "complex 
  > and multiple-layered readings." Oscar Wilde said that if a book 
  > isn't worth reading a second time it hardly bears reading the 
  > first time. 
Wilde was right. The same applies to any text. In the present instance, I do wish you'd 
taken time out to read what I actually had to say. Nowhere whatsoever do I imply that 
modern fiction is as old as I am. I was commenting on fictions that recognise the 
complexity of the late twentieth century and reflect it through their own complexity. 
 
  > If you fail to understand this, you'll never understand 
  > literature at all. And if you don't understand literature well 
  > beyond your narrowly-defined scope, you'll never really "get" 
  > _Gravity's Rainbow_ -- which is why most of the people who devote 
  > their lives to it always come away from it with something new. 
I do understand it, which is why on my seven readings of _Gravity's Rainbow_ I've 
always found something new. The challenge, however, is to read the text itself, not 
what you think the text says. Without wanting to open a debate on the plurality of 
readings and post-modernism, it's simply wrong to say that, for example, Stephen 
Crane's _The Red Badge of Courage_ is a study of working-class life in urban Uganda. 
The following are also examples of wrong readings of texts: 
(1)   Vidal's assertion that _Gravity's Rainbow_ is aimed solely at the academy. 
(2)   Welch's assertion that disagreement with Vidal's Pynchon criticism is an attack on
        Vidal. 
(3)   Welch's assertion that there is no distinction between a book aimed at the
        academy and a manner of reading associated with academics and others. 
(4)   Welch's assertion that I maintain that only books written in the last forty-odd 
        years are worth reading.
 
Passion is no substitute for precision, I'm afraid. 

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"