Gaddis and Pynchon

[MalignD at aol.com]

Bandwraith:

<<The comparison to Mr. Parini is probably unfair to both of them, but I 
assume you were looking to emphasize your point ...>>

Correct.

<<On the other hand, is it really so surprising that an author who has shown 
no interest what-so-ever in making himself available even to those fans who 
adore him, should write a novel with no concern for the needs or desires of 
the public? Pynchon is one of the few authors who doesn't have to answer, "to 
what end," since he answers only to himself. Do you think he cares whether or 
not you or I like GR? He writes what he wants. ...  I would say, either 
engage the material and criticize  or praise it specifically, or, move on to 
something else.>>

I'm certain he has no interest in whether or not you or I like GR or don't 
like M&D, for that matter (although it's possible he would be interested if 
he knew; i.e., I'm not certain he would be disdainful, necessarily, of the 
opinions of his readers.)  But I'm more interested in what I think than in 
what Pynchon thinks, since I'm the one finding the time and making the effort 
to read the books.  

GR was a book that reached in every direction at once--high and low, backward 
and forward in time.  It seemed precisely of the moment, although its setting 
in time was thirty years earlier, yet also seemed to describe some uncharted 
future.  I don't need to describe GR to anyone on this list.  It was 
audacious, ambitious, bet the farm on itself, and won.  Such a book, such an 
author, creates fairly high expectations for himself and from his readers.

M&D fails for me in two ways.  One, it fails in light of the above, in terms 
of expectation.  Pynchon should certainly write what he wants, but a 
mock-historical novel, filled with quaint characters speaking quaint dialog? 
It's not that it's not well done; I suppose it is: he employs the comma/dash 
[,--], e.g., once standard.  He got most of this right, one trusts, but the 
whole enterprise is a disappointment, given the expectations the author 
engenders.  (This from Pynchon after all these years?)  But I also think it 
fails on its own terms.  I find it more often than not painful when it's 
trying to be funny, ponderous when it's trying to be profound.  Did you 
really enjoy slogging through 700+ pages of this sort of thing?:

"Thah' Wall?  eeh!  eeh!  it'll go through thah' wall!  No,-- all I ask, is 
tha' thoo hold the Tub up, but for a minute, whilst I go reconnoitre."

"Geometry and slaughter!"  ejaculates Squire Haligast, "--The future of war, 
yet ancient as the mindless Exactitudes of Alexander's Phalanx."

"Eeh, Mason, mind thy Wig now, for these are all good lads, they drink but in 
moderation, no more riotously than in Wapping, I am sure ...?"

"Arrhh ...  now am I entirely sedate, thankee."

Etc.

I'm also (obviously, I suppose) making a metacriticism, that directed toward 
an attitude that seems to find any criticism of Pynchon out of line, an 
entrenched fealty that seems to believe every last line is a great line since 
it was written by the master and saying otherwise is not so much criticism as 
blasphemy.  (Millison once took umbrage at my suggesting that Pynchon might 
not have achieved the stature of William Faulkner.)  

I don't bring this stuff up just to pound on Pynchon and piss people off; I 
think it's necessary to seeing what he has and has not accomplished.  I would 
argue that the failure of M&D gives new and useful perspective to the 
accomplishment of GR, how singular it is.  It suggests that a book like GR is 
not only a matter of talent and genius, but those things operating in a 
particular time and place, perhaps only in the mind of a man at a particular 
time in his life.  I think that is the case.

<<Tell us specifically what you like about Pale Fire ...>>

I'll be as brief as possible.  Pale Fire is a novel in the form of a 999-line 
poem (entitled Pale Fire), the introduction to that poem, the notes to it, 
and an index.  On its most immediate level it is a satire of a particular 
sort of bad criticism and commentary.  However, the book is also a perversely 
structured puzzle and mystery that keeps unfolding onto ever-changing levels 
of story and meaning.  

Not only is it dazzling to read, there is also a great deal written about 
Pale Fire, about the relationship of its two main characters, Kinbote and 
Shade, a very intelligent subliterature of attempted puzzle solving.  Brian 
Boyd, Nabokov's biographer, has published two long essays on the puzzle of 
the book's internal authorship, the latter contradicting the former.  Richard 
Rorty has also written about it, and many others.  Which is to say that, if 
the book takes hold, its pleasures and conundrums may stay with you for a 
long time.  I can think of no book quite like it and so I recommend it.