NY Times Sunday Book Review

[Ken Jones]

At 02:52 AM 5/13/97 +0300, Heikki wrote:
>Me too. Not only for _Sot-Weed Factor_; Barth also has openly noticed
>that texts by someone called Thomas Pynchon exist. Unlike Bellow, Updike, 
>Roth, Oates & Co., whose cozy duck pool of belles lettres has obviously 
>never heard of someone under that name. 

I thought so too, Heikki, until yesterday's Oregonian which featured reviews
of M&D, Roth's American Pastoral, and Bellow's The Actual all on the very
same page (with the main head: "Icons of 20th Century American Fiction; "the
Bellow review, btw, got center position and included a sketch of the Nobel
laureate).

The reviewer for The Actual quotes from a "long interview" with Bellow in
the May 1997 issue of Playboy magazine (titled, and I'm guessing here, "Who
is Saul Bellow and Why Won't He Sleep With My Wife?"). Here's Bellow on Pynchon:

"Pynchon I like, but he is sort of an endless virtuoso. It's like listening
to 20 hours  of Paganini. One would be plenty."

He's even harsher on Norman Mailer:

"Mailer is an extraordinary writer of vigorous prose, but he doesn't have
the kind of mind to go with the kind of writing he chose to do. He does have
historical ideas about himself, but they are foolish ideas."

Bellow also favors Philip Roth over John Updike for the Nobel Prize. On Roth:

"He's a little buggy now and then, but a very gifted writer."

Unfortunately, the Oregonian website does not have links to these reviews. 

Ken Jones
Samsara, Inc.