MDMD2: Magnetical Stupor

[John Lundy]

MalD,

These things come down to personal taste to some extent.  I read Something 
Happened and Good as Gold with mounting horror and disbelief.  I couldn't - 
and still can't - believe that the guy who wrote Catch 22 was capable of 
works so pedestrian.  But I may be wrong and I might have been expecting 
too much.  I concur with your view of GR being better than what came before 
it.  Since I think it is the greatest novel ever written (Joyceans rise as 
one in revolt), I obviously feel it was better than anything that came 
before it by anybody, not just Pynchon.  So the bar is high.

But you're absolutely right, it is all over the map.  I just chucked it in 
because it intrigues me that some people can and do lose the muse.  Like, 
will Mariah Carey ever be the same again?

On Tuesday, 25 September 2001 23:30, MalignD at aol.com [SMTP:MalignD at aol.com] 
wrote:
> <<We all understand athletes being past it, but can the same thing be 
true of
> those  involved in intellectual pursuits?  For instance, Joseph Heller 
was
> never the same after Catch 22 and, at the risk of all the demons in Hades 
> nipping at my
>
> fleeing heels, I don't believe Pynchon was anything like the same writer 
post
> GR.>>
>
> I think it's all over the map.  Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment,
> Brothers Karamazov, The Possessed, all after fifty.  Bellow and Roth 
declined
> not at all.  On the other hand, Hemingway (e.g.) is pretty much a 
downward
> spiral, accelerating with age, fueled by drink.
>
> I disagree about Heller.  Something Happened is wonderful and very
> underrated.  Good as Gold, and Picture This are good.  Closing Time is 
bad
> and the King David book languishes, but it wasn't all downhill, as you
> suggest.
>
> As for Pynchon, I agree, although GR is better also than what went 
before.