gore vidal article

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 5 Jun 2000 mdsheppard at mindspring.com wrote:

> Paul Mackin mentioned the article (NYRB 1976) in which Gore Vidal critiques
 a laundry list of "postmodernist" writers.  Can anyone provide me with the
 crux of Vidal's beef with this set of writers (Pynchon, Barth, Barthelme,
 etc)?  The author of the David Foster Wallace review in a recent NYRB makes
 reference to this article as well, noting that Vidal refers to the above camp
 as "R&D" fiction.  
> If anyone can enlighten me on this I'd appreciate it.  I'd be interested
 in hearing what pynchon list prople think of the connection (to me spurious)
 that is made between this set of authors.  It seems to me that the ethos
 of Barth and Pynchon, for example, couldn't be more different....

> I'm new to this list BTW...I look forward to reading any comments.

Unfortunately NYRB does not have the Vidal article on line yet. All that's
available there is a list of the books he discusses, for which see below. 
Fortunately since I'm practically a charter subscriber and have an attic
full of the old things I'll quote a few line from the '76 piece which at
least gives its flavor. But to answer your specific question  Vidal
lumps Barth and Pynchon together because Barthelme had said a couple
years earlier that the only four American writers worth reading are
Barth, Paley, Gass and Pynchon. But now a brief quote from Gore (which by 
the way gives the origin of the plastic designation):

I  cannot help but feel a certain depression after reading Mr. Barthelme's
chosen writers. I realize that language changes from generation to
generation. But it does not, necessarily, improve. The meager rattling
prose of all these writers, excepting Gass, depresses me. Beautiful
sentences are not easy to write, despite Mr. Barthelme's demur. Since
beauty is relative only to intention, there are doubless those who find
beauty in the pages of books where I find "a flocculent appearance,
something opaque, creamy and curdled, something prowerless ever to
achieve the triumphant smoothness of Nature. But what best reveals it for
what it is is the sound it gives, at once hollow and flat: its noise is
its doing, as are its colors, for it seems capable of retaining only the
most chemical-looking ones. Of yellow, red and green, it keeps only the
aggressive quality . . . ." What is "it"? The work of the new American
formalists? No "it" is plastic, as described by Bathes in Mythogies.

My, we were in a bad mood that morning.

			P.

American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction
GORE VIDAL

July 15, 1976.
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY

Writing Degree Zero and Elements of Semiology
by Roland Barthes
1970
published by Beacon Press

S/Z
by Roland Barthes and translated by Richard Miller
1974
published by Hill and Wang

The Pleasure of the Text
by Roland Barthes and translated by Richard Miller
1975
published by Hill and Wang

The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American
Writers
by Joe David Bellamy
1974
published by University of Illinois Press

Come Back, Dr. Caligari
by Donald Barthelme
1964, (paperback)
published by Little, Brown, Anchor paperback

Snow White
by Donald Barthelme
1967, (paperback)
published by Atheneum, Bantam paperback

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
by Donald Barthelme
1968
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

City Life
by Donald Barthelme
1970
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Sadness
by Donald Barthelme
1972, (paperback)
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Bantam paperback

Guilty Pleasures
by Donald Barthelme
1974, (paperback)
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Dell paperback

The Dead Father
by Donald Barthelme
1975
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

The Little Disturbances of Man: Stories of Men and Women at
Love
by Grace Paley
1968, (paperback)
published by Viking, NAL paperback

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
by Grace Paley
1974
published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Omensetter's Luck
by William Gass
1966
published by NAL

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
by William Gass
1968
published by Harper and Row

The Floating Opera
by John Barth
1967, (paperback)
published by Doubleday, revised edition, Bantam paperback

The End of the Road
by John Barth
1967, (paperback)
published by Doubleday, revised edition, Bantam paperback

The Sot-Weed Factor
by John Barth
1967, (paperback)
published by Doubleday, revised edition, Bantam paperback

Giles Goat-Boy
by John Barth
1966, (paperback)
published by Doubleday, Fawcett paperback

Lost in the Funhouse
by John Barth
1969, (paperback)
published by Doubleday, Bantam paperback

Chimera
by John Barth
1972
published by Random House

V.
by Thomas Pynchon
1962, (paperback)
published by Lippincott, Bantam paperback

The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
1966, (paperback)
published by Lippincott, Bantam paperback

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
1973, (paperback)
published by Viking, Bantam paperback

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