Writing Theory

[Tiarnan]

Nabokov wrote a short novel called the Conjuror or the Enchanter,
in which the protagonist has a predilection for young girls and displays
HH's
achingly empty patrician arrogance. It spares us the anabasis across
motel America, for which give thanks. Joyce's Ulysses originated
in a story to be added to Dubliners after the Dead, but which grew in
the telling.

Pace Vineland, I don't quite see what the objections are all about. Strikes
me as an original and interesting novel. I s'pose a literary critic, dazed
by
notions of oeuvre and writerly destiny, might have difficulty fitting that
pigeon into his pynchon-hole. Hence the testiness...

Best

T
----- Original Message -----
From: Watson <ghwatson at phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
To: <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
Cc: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2000 6:58 PM
Subject: Writing Theory


> I don't know much about the theory of writing, but I wanted to ask a
> general question. I'm writing a thesis on Mason and Dixon, and I keep
> contextualizing it against both GR and Vineland. All mainstream reviews
> of MandD take their time to get in at least one negative comment about
> Vineland, something I lament because I feel that Pynchon had to write
> Vineland to write MandD. This leads to my question...is there anything
> written about the idea that novelists write "pre-writes" in the form of
> smaller novels before their bigger works, ie no V without the story from
> Slow Learner, no GR without TCOL49, no MandD without Vineland. It's as
> though P writes an introduction or outline for what he wishes to write
> later, and it still gets published.
> Perhaps that is an oversimplification, but I wonder if this has
> come up in discussion. Best,
> Graham
>
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>     " All this talk about architecture and art is very dangerous: it
>     brings the ears so far forward that they act as blinkers to the eyes."
>
> -Edwin Luytens
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