Fwd: Pynchon's fat novel repudiated?

[Richard Romeo]

One thing that maybe Frazen regrets is that he came across as being disingenuous about wanting serious literature to be important and judged as such by a wide group of readers (guess you can say popular), not as some snobby and elite hobby for the over-educated and academically inclined--critics, professors, theorists, etc. but was concerned at the same time that being tied to Oprah would somehow diminish his credentials as that serious writer by becoming so popular. 

His New Yorker article on Gaddis seemed like he was trying to reverse himself yet again by claiming that 'look I'm not really a snob, I don't really like long off-putting difficult books like the ones Gaddis wrote (and like his first two books) anymore. I can understand him losing interest in Gaddis because he wanted to be inspired by a different course for his own writing (less weighted by form, experiment, more character-driven, neo-realist e.g.)

The Corrections is probably a better book than 27th City and Strong Motion in any case

Reminds me tangentially about CR Lee who was trying to write a Pynchon-esque long novel and dropped it to write more Frazen-esque angst in the suburbs type work.

Much of the new skein of new writers are indebted to the old war horses like Pynchon, Coover but they want to incorporate that chaos into a more realistic frame. No doubt in my mind this is what continues to be popular.

Pynchon is a dinosaur in a way. And what he represents near extinction in the current culture. Unlike most postmodernists though he'll never be irrelevant or forgotten

Richard 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Malignd
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 3:30 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Fwd: Pynchon's fat novel repudiated?

<<But long enough to find himself on the bestseller
list.>>

You're misremembering the circumstances and
overvauling (at least in this instance) the impact of
Oprah's imprimatur.

Franzen was invited onto her show; he publically
expressed some qualms about the idea, she disinvited
him, and never discussed his book on the air.  Some of
the books went out with her little seal on them but,
in light of the flap, and the perceived insult to
Oprah and her fans, it's difficult to credit her for
the book's popularity.

Further, The Corrections got all but unanimously good
reviews and won the National Book Award only a few
weeks after the disinvitation.




	
		
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