how my wife reads pynchon

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 some of you probably know this "my spouse isn't as enthousiastic about pynchon 
 as myself" issue from personal experience ...

 kirsten read v (in original), vineland and - recently - m&d; also the first  
 part of gr. she loves pynchon's descriptions of nature, but she is, all in all, 
 not really fond of his novels. she thinks them to be written exclusively from a 
 male perspective; from trp's modelling of women in m&d kirsten was especially  
 off-turned. interestingly enough, she likes vineland best. in this underrated  
 work there's indeed, i agree on that, a basic female perspective, a three   
 generation women-story centered around frenesi. perhaps we can amplify gr's  
 leni pökler here. but in general this issue of a possible gender-bias in   
 pynchon seems to mark a relevant critique and it also has been debated here on 
 this list. when i asked kirsten some minutes ago what she thinks of v today,   
 she said, while preparing green tea from japan, that she remembers some of the 
 historical chapters as exiting, yet found the nyc whole sick crew scenes in   
 their salingeresque 50s-talk a little rancid. well, folks, of course she should 
 read gravity's rainbow in original from the beginning to the end, but she  
 simply prefers not to do so ... having read the first part in german, kirsten - 
 very similar to her reaction towards ulysses after having read portrait of the 
 artist - sed: well, i can see that it is a great book and that it, somehow,  
 would be an interesting read, but i'm simply not fascinated enough to work  
 myself through ... tja, that's how it is ... fortunately we still have our  
 literal boundary objects: marcel proust, wolfgang koeppen, or uwe johnson ... & 
 then there are other media of exchange.

 when kirsten read v in the early 90s, she wrote me a postcard, changing all the 
 words' first letters into v, each in a different colour ...


kai  //:: ps: out now --- sick dick & the volkswagens featuring frenesi gates: 
                          "ain't many women on pynchon-list". executive 
                          producer: dr. dre. with additional remixes by 
                          pelham/haas, timbaland, and kruder & dorfmeister.
                          hamburg 2001: säure records.