Cowart on Vineland

[Phil Wise]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jane" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: Cowart on Vineland


> "Pynchon exposes the millenarian canker in the flower
> children as rigorously as he diagnoses the reactionary
> carcinoma of the next generation...Pynchon makes his
> political sympathies plain enough. But the polemics have
> little to do with the novel's art, which one sees in the
> indirection and economy that deliver this and the other
> Pynchon works from the realm of propaganda and didacticism.
> This author's art--an art far superior, it seems to me, to
> that od such novelists on the left as Dos Passos, Steinbeck
> or Vonegut--commands the aesthetic interest of readers  who
> may find the politics somewhat overwrought...He remains the
> only contemporary writer whose grasp of history's mythic
> dimensions merits comparison with that of Joyce..."
>
>
> I think one of the most interesting clues to Pynchon's view
> of things is that he has Jess Becker quoting James quoting
> Emerson, "Secret retributions are always restoring the
> level, when disturbed, of the divine justice."
>
> Jumpin Jane O'
>
I agree that Pynchon's art is extraordinary, especially the way the texts
allow so many different readings.  His novels are both/and - or the whole
lot.  I've enjoyed your posting on the spiritual/religious aspects of
pynchon; you seem to have tapped a rich vein.  I also feel his political
analysis is far subtler than Cowart gives him credit for in Vineland; one
set of readings in no way negates the other, not with this guy.

Phil