JS

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> <>
> 
> It isn't a matter of whether or not it pales.  If there are weaknesses, and I 
> think there are, they're fair game for discussion.
> 
> << On another subject, do I remember correctly that Malign was the one to 
> point out  echoes of Dickens in the very early innings of the current GRGR? >>
> 
> I noted affinities between the beginnings of GR and Bleak House.  (Bleak 
> House is also one of the novels Pynchon would have studied with Nabokov when 
> the latter taught at Cornell, for whatever that may be worth.)


OK, I turn myself in; it is me who has written on _GR_ and _BH_
for the Antwerp issue of _PN_ (with something like 1/3 of the
article focusing on affinities and differences between CD and TP). 
Well, there may be other essays touching on Dickens in the new
one, but I still haven't seen it.

At some point during the summer of '97 John Krafft and I were 
chatting at his and Sharon's kitchen in Hamilton, when I suddenly 
dared to suggest: "Ever been struck with the similar feeling in 
the London parts of _GR_ and _BH_?". 

Of course, John had. (As he and Sharon are, AFAIK, still on
vacation in Europe, I feel justified to talk in his name now.)
As early as mid-70s, when a graduate at SUNY-Buffalo, he'd 
been taking a course on Dickens. When they dealt with _BH_, 
he introduced some affinities with _GR_ to the professor 
after the lecture. (The prof, however, did not seem to be 
taken up with Pynchon at all -- might've been one of your 
stubborn 19th century Eng Lit specialists?) 

I found it somewhat astonishing that e.g. Schwarzbach (sp?), 
who has written a whole monograph on Dickens and the city, 
does not mention Dickens in his review of _GR_, which is 
included in one of those late-70s collections on TP.

So I decided to delve into the issue a bit more thoroughly.
I had written some preliminary (post?-)Benjaminian stuff on 
_GR_ and London with the working title "The Impossibility 
of Flanerie", but after the discussion with John, I changed
the angle. (Not that the stuff I wrote earlier would not
fit in with what I bring up in the article. And I surely was 
happy to see Dickens mentioned at those early stages of GRGR, 
but last year(s) have been purgatorial enough to me to feel 
unable to contribute to the pynchon-l but on rare occasions.)


Heikki