antw. Gaddis and Pynchon

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

MalignD at aol.com schrieb:

> Nabokov?  Saul Bellow?  Philip Roth?  Gunther Grass?  Heinrich Boll?  
> Garcia-Marquez?  
>
> (Nabokov and Boll are dead but, since Gaddis is also, I trust you meant to 
> include them as contemporary, "since 1965."  Samuel Beckett was alive after 
> 1965; so was Anthony Powell and Kingsley Amis and Evelyn Waugh, to name a few 
> others who, unfortunately, barely approximate Pynchon's wit, intelligence, 
> and skill.)
>
> Do playwrights count?  Tom Stoppard?  Harold Pinter?    
>
> Not even close.  
>   
> There are things Pynchon does well and things he does not so well.  (Creating 
> three-dimensional characters, comes to mind.)  And writers have their ups and 
> downs, certainly, but I can't think of a novel by any of the above as 
> thoroughly dreary and mediocre as Vineland.  Some early Roth, perhaps, but 
> nothing he's written since 1980.  


  sorry, you kinda lost me here. heinrich böll?! i mean, he was a likable guy, 
  no doubt, but he never wrote a really great novel. "billiard um halbzehn", his 
  best book, reaches not even the complexity of col49, not to speak here of 
  gravity's rainbow. also think that both, grass & garcia-marquez, are 
  constantly overrated. yet nabokov, bellow (ah, "humboldt's gift"), and roth   
  do certainly play in pynchon's league. and in addition to rilke and thomas   
  mann ("'the magic mountain' was an elementary reading for me --- and is to me 
  perhaps the most important novel of all" says susan sontag in 'der spiegel'   
  12/02, p. 197), who are still the most read german authors in america, let    
  me, once more, hint at the works of gottfried benn, hans henny jahnn, and the 
  holy rolf dieter brinkmann who was pynchon's first strong reader over here *

regards, kai  //:: ps: in that 'spiegel'-interview a couple of months ago mrs. 
                  sontag also said that she, perhaps, wants to learn german to 
                 re-read the magic mountain in original which would turn it into 
                der zauberberg --- 

                  pps: we shouldn't forget about cormac mccarthy!