The Last Word on Vidal

[Paul Mackin]

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From: 	Murthy Yenamandra[SMTP:yenamand at cs.umn.edu]

There have been occasional attempts to criticize Pynchon's books that
were not the standard fan-club-type stuff (about the women in Vineland,
for instance), but they didn't lead to all out wars, partly because TRP
is hip and ironic enough to avoid overdetermination of his purposes.

>>>>>Well, this seems like a perfect place for squaredom to step into the discussion--not to criticize Pynch for his misogyny (that wouldn't be quite  square enough), but to ask why he finds it necessary to hide behind irony and underdetermination.  This would, in my opinion, constitute a Vidal-like critique. I DO recall that in his now famous "Plastic Fiction" essay, V. remarks on the degree to which certain writers put words in quotation marks in 
order to avoid responsibility for their possible literal meanings.

Of course, the above criticism can be countered by saying that the ambiguity is necessary to render the true state of modern existence. But at least this is arguable. The issue will have been joined.

					P.








What we don't need is pseudo-criticism on the order of
I-am-just-a-regular-guy-who-doesn't-understand-this-complicated-shit.
There is enough boring stuff on this list about Real Guys Vs. Academics.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
    "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time can not decay
     I'm junk, but I'm holding up this little wild bouquet
     Democracy is coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen