Paleface Pynchon?

[Terrance]

Good stuff,  I'll take up one question at a time, hope
that's OK? 

Dave Meury wrote:
> 
> But I think Pynchon is still a little too demanding for a culture that has
> resurrected professional wrestling and roller derby, that thrills to
> perversion du jure topics on talk show / chair-throwing exhibitions,
> political debate represented by ad-hominem shouting matches, TV
> documentaries approaching the level of snuff films, Howard Stern's farting
> contests,. . . it goes on-and-on.  Of course, citing such identifies me as
> a neurotic prude and, anyway, doesn't Pynchon's work have its share of
> crudeness?  A-and what about Chaucer, Rabelais, Shakespeare, among dozens
> of other culturally renowned authors one could name?

Well, there is "crudeness" in all sorts of texts. It's not
the "crudeness" of Chaucrer's farts that elevate his text
above Stearne's Fartman, is it? Today, on the Tube, it being
Shakespeare's birthday, a program on his "The Merchant of
Venice" and the history of anti-Semitism in Europe, reminded
me that Pudding's sucking on a black turd/negro penis is
nothing new under the sun. If it were simply  wrestling or
chair-throwing or shouting contests or "crudeness" that
distinguishes "great texts" from crap, Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Rabelias, indeed almost all the texts "neurotic prudes"
might hold up as being great (whatever that may be) could
not be so Distinguished. What is it about Chaucer's farts
that smell better than Howard Stearne's farts? What is it
about Swift's crap that smells better than Cheech and
Chong's? What is it about cathedrals built to honor the
Virgin or Pyramids built to honor the gods that makes them
"greater" than Dairy Queens or those highway sand/salt
storage facilities so ubiquitous here in New York? Aside
from the fact that one is a film, the other a book, is there
something that even non neurotic prudes might say makes
Vineland a great work and Forest Gump a piece of crap that
doesn't smell as good as Aristophanes' worst scatologicals?
Pynchon's Crudeness can't be the problem, because many of
the big fat novels on the favorite book lists (old and new)
include things crude and the like. Is it that Pynchon is too
demanding or is it that folks don't like his books? Is it
that Pynchon, like Joyce before him, for example, is somehow
experimental, opening new frontiers or whatever?  Faulkner
is still not easy reading, Joyce, Woolf, not easy.  Is
Pynchon really more demanding than some of his
contemporaries? Some of his predecessors? Even "professional
readers" can't seem to agree on some basic things that
happen in GR. Brian McHale (although I disagree with some of
his formulations) explains some of the reasons for this.  GR
is a very difficult book for everyone, this however, may
actually make the book more popular, "gotta read that GR,
wow!, guys a genius, makes Moby-Dick and Ulysses look like
Stephen King." Perhaps it is a matter of distance and time.
Pynchon is still writing books, I guess, and perhaps in a
fifty years or a hundred years or more his novels will be
better understood. McHale's essay on Vineland considers how
Pynchon's use of television in Vineland might somehow
deprive the book of canonical status. Certainly, critical
approaches will  change too and perhaps Pynchon's crudeness
will then only be compared with Chaucer's or Swift's and not
Howard Stearne's.