Mike Davis & Thomas Pynchon: Journalist vs. Artist

[Doug Millison]

At 11:33 AM -0800 12/9/98, Richard Romeo wrote:
>If anyone has read the recent article about Mike Davis in the current
>Salon,

I read the Salon article (at
http://www.salonmagazine.com/it/feature/1998/12/cov_07feature.html ) Some
LA boosters -- the journalist relies primarily on a real estate developer
with some very shaky criticisms of Davis' work -- have their panties in a
knot about Davis' hard-hitting critique of LA, and the academics quoted in
the article don't like Davis's Marxist stance. Big surprise. But, by the
end of the article, the journalist has undercut most of the most
melodramatically-phrased assertions presented at the beginning of the
article. Despite the journalist's best efforts, Mike Davis comes across as
a committed, engaged researcher and journalist who has essentially proven
the points he set out to prove in his books.

I agree that it would be very interesting to know to what degree Pynchon
comes to his research with some pre-determined story fundamentals in mind,
and to what degree his stories grow out of his research and the creative
process of working with the fruits of his research.


D O U G  M I L L I S O N  [http://www.online-journalist.com]
"All these voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing
toward the Void of forgetfulness?"--Thomas Pynchon