GRGR Pynchon on Pynchon (was Slothrop & Sloth)

[Doug Millison]

At 9:17 AM -0400 6/19/99, Paul Mackin wrote:
>It's the genre of a talented novelist for a few probably much needed bucks
>being able to turn out an entertaining paragraph or three  on even so
>unpromising a sin as sloth. :-)

I love this picture of TRP, the author whose books are perennial backlist
bestsellers (steady stream of royalities, in other words) and whose name
pops up on the Nobel short list each year, hustling a newspaper assignment
for "probably much needed bucks."  Read TRP as a jaded newspaper hack who
cranks out a few hundred words on any topic at hand if that's how you see
him, but I choose not to, I read him as a serious writer. His Sloth essay
is of a piece with his essay on Love in the Time of Cholera, Watts,
Luddites, intro to Richard Farina's novel, and other essays:  it's obvious
that he chooses to write, when he writes non-fiction, about the things that
concern him deeply enough to spend years, decades, articulating and
elaborating in his fiction.

d o u g  m i l l i s o n  http://www.online-journalist.com