antw. salesmandeath better than Vineland?

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Tim Strzechowski schrieb:

> Obviously, any time we deal with "better" in terms of literature, it's a
> question of taste. And to weigh a novel against a play, it's apples and
> oranges anyway.
                         
                        at least both are fruits ...

> But, that said, Miller does a far more powerful job of exploring the themes
> of lost illusions and eluded dreams than Pynchon does in Vineland.

   yet does the play have acid, japan, crypto-humans, sado-masochism, encouters 
   with the dead or sharp political satire? i also think that pynchon's view on 
   women (only in this book, btw) is more adequate than miller's. actually, 
   vineland is written from a female perspective: frenesi the heroine. 
  
> The story
> of Willy Loman and his family is more universal, more applicable to the rest
> of us because we, too, experience the frustrations with our jobs, our
> children, our lives. Vineland -- though a very good novel and far better
> than any fiction I could ever produce -- isn't as good as Salesman when it
> comes to exploring the aforementioned themes, in my opinion.  The situations
> that the characters find themselves in are a bit too surreal; that's not to
> say they don't have significance, but the play examines these themes in a
> more everyday way.  Does it make sense?  Kinda difficult to define.

  makes sense certainly. perhaps i'm a little handicapped here cause we read the 
  play in high-school very closely. with 'monarch notes', theatre-goings and 
  such. actually we had a whole section focussing on the american dream in which 
  we also read gatsby (still like "tender is the night" much more). but isn't   
  the play - though elegant in its artictic economy - a little simple? i mean,  
  the names alone ... "willy loman" and even "biff" (george costanza, who is   
  called with the name by jerry more than once, describes biff adequately as   
  "the biggest loser in the history of american literature"), these names are   
  more than talking, they are howling and, perhaps, a little pathetic ... for 
  high-school teaching this is of course great, everybody understood the 
  message. yet if i'd had to choose between the two books now, my vote would 
  always go the much more ambivalent vineland. gives me more to think. and to 
  feel. though it will never reach salesmandeath' canonical status (the play 
  appears even in 'alf'), and though it's not as good as "gravity's rainbow", 
  "der zauberberg" or "blood meridian", i personlly like vineland very much. 
  maybe this has to do with the fact that i was born in the 60's second half 
  into which i thus have an ongoing and passionate interest.

  me is, by the way, pretty glad that we never read pynchon at high-school. what 
  we did - the guy teaching hadn't had invented the wheel or anything but knew  
  which books to celebrate - was shakespeare (romeo & juliet, macbeth) orwell,  
  shaw, eliot, salinger (catcher), miller, albee, williams (tennessee, not sweet 
  serena), fitzgerald & kesey's cuckoo's nest. i also insisted on william blake.

later, kai