Pynchon's fat novel repudiated?

[Bekah]

At 8:46 AM +0200 5/9/04, umberto rossi wrote:
>In data 8 May 2004, verso le 18:25, Bekah si trovò a scrivere su Re:
>Pynchon's  fat novel repudiated?:
>
>>  And on the East side of the pond, Eco's books are not slender volumes
>>  and Haldor Laxness' Independent People felled a significant number of
>>  trees.
>
>Hah! Eco writes big fat books because he shamelessly imitates
>Pynchon. Fact is that here there are few passionate Pynchon readers,
>so people think that what Eco has been doing in terms of fiction is
>something original. Which isn't. We have better writers, luckily, but
>here the publishing industry insists on slender novels, not heavy
>bricks--though US bricks have been regualrly translated. Not that
>their sales are huge. There was a lot of *talk* about Underworld, but
>I wonder just how many actually read the book.


I know  a few Europeans who have read Underworld 
and they did *not* like it. It was too American. 
It truly is a very American novel (not 
necessarily "The GAN"), and much of it is very 
New York.  It goes from a famous baseball game to 
massive consumerism and Cold War paranoia with 
Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover and the Texas 
Highway Killer and all sorts of good 
old-fashioned Amerikan things. I think it's hard 
for non-Americans (or even Americans under age 
40) to connect with (if you will).

Bekah