Eminem v. Pynchon

[David Sarno]

> David Morris:
> Eminem is unrelentingly commercial, while Pynchon elaborates his art
> with little apparent attention to market realities.

The (relatively) great thing about Eminem is that of the 20 or so songs per
album, and average of about 2 make it to MTV, and usually the broadcast
versions are so massively mute-laden that they ends up being half song, half
silence.  I guess 10% is actually a pretty good hit ratio, but you've got to
consider that it's an upper bound.  The other songs are simply too [network
censor euphemism] to play on the air.  The ones that make it are horribly
diluted stylistically and lyrically, and that's because he's pandering to
market types with those.  The best songs are the most racy and
pseudo-offensive.  Here's an example of a lyric that's not only never played
on air, they actually [bleeped] it *on the album*:

I take seven [kids] from [Columbine], stand 'em all in line
Add an AK-47, a revolver, a nine
A Mack-11 and it oughta solve the problem of mine
And that's a whole school of bullies shot up all at one time
--I'm Back, The Marshall Mathers LP

If you look at something like this, claims that he's a market running dog
are harder to make.  When you have thruppence-a-dozen acts like NSync and
Backstreet boys whose central artistic dogma is to appear on MTV as much as
technologically possible, Eminem looks like a rebel who says
'fuck the market and MTV', sometimes in those exact words, 'I'll go
tri-platinum without ever getting radio play, and offend as many whiny
mid-westerners as possible along the way.'

Might Pynchon at least offer an empathetic nod from the back of the room?

--dave

p.s. I've only read GR once so I could be completely wrong.