GR: Masterpiece or mullet wrapper? (2nd try)

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

This doesn't seem to have gotten through so I'll try again, sorry if it
repeats. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 1997 16:01:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Steven Maas (CUTR)" <maas at cutr.eng.usf.edu>
To: Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: GR: Masterpiece or mullet wrapper?

doktor Jimmy comments "surely there are _some_ criteria against which we
may judge [GR]."  (Meaning, I think, criteria other than the criterion I
mentioned before--namely a gut reaction, is it a masterpiece, yes or no). 

Well, I have no doubt that there are objective criteria--for those who
approach books from a literary criticism perspective (a fine perspective
I'm sure).  I'm really not qualified to add much to a discussion of that
type, being as I am more of a visceral reader.  By that I mean that, for
good or ill, I tend to react to books by whether or not I like reading
them and whether or not the content delivers a figurative punch to the
solar plexus. I can see where this may not seem to others as much of a
reason to declare a given book a masterpiece, but I guess to me
masterpieces are personal rather than agreed upon by the majority.  For
this reason, all I can really do to defend my personal choices is to say
what it is about a given work that makes me say...it's a masterpiece! (I
won't repeat here my reasons for declaring GR such a thing.) 

Jimmy raises that pesky plot question again.  I'm like Meg (are you sure
you're not me? I'm getting confused) in that I really do try, at least,
not to have preconceptions about what to expect when approaching
books--especially those by an author known for, so to speak, pushing the
envelope. I agree with Jimmy that "[w]hile deliberately disrupting these
expectations can be liberating for the writer and bracing for the reader,
it doesn't make a book great, just iconoclastic."  I can only offer my
same old "red herring" defense again (I promise--no more fish metaphors
from now on).  To me, in my personal idiosyncratic view, the fact that GR
has an unusual structure is irrelevant.  To me GR is a masterpiece because
it says more about life than any other fictional work (if we don't want to
call it a novel that's fine with me) that I've read, and says it
concisely, it seems to me--nothing verbose about it.

	Steve Maas