Hitting Below the Mason -Dixon Line
John Doe
tristero69 at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 7 22:06:15 CDT 2005
Yes I agree heartily; I have long suspected that for
whatever reasons of marketing or perhaps the appeal of
a certain title to the uninitiated, new readers of
Pynchon seem to pick Vineland off the shelf and read
that novel FIRST ( mebbe cuz like, it has, like, a
TOtally crunchy-granola kinda resonance and
connotations of like Greenpeace, redwood forests and
save the whales, dude! )..and so they get their first
exposure to his writing from arguably his weakest
novel....and yeah, I found GR rough going first
around, but I did buckle down and finish it and have
read it word for word a second time...and I would
agree with you that I would not have been so inclined
if i didn't recognize something there to begin
with....so those who don't probably don't get past the
Pirate Prentice Banana breakfast scene....so yeah you
have brought up some very good contingencies here...
--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
> I'm not so sure. My immediate reaction too is that
> the review is crap.
> Total crap. For starters, there's nothing in it to
> indicate that Pekar
> read the book, or even the majority of Pynchon's
> works which he is
> slamming. He cites a blurb for _M&D_ (and another
> review), always a
> sure sign that the reviewer has taken a short cut.
> Compares page
> lengths, provides a shopping list of prior authors,
> throws in the
> obligatory Joyce, Nobel, "reclusiveness" and
> "archaic prose" mentions,
> and goes off into an irrelevant rant about Wynton
> Marsalis winning the
> first jazz-related Pulitzer (and seems totally
> oblivious to the fact
> that Pynchon has written quite a bit about some of
> the jazz greats of
> yesteryear, including at least one on Pekar's own
> list, offering
> instead the throwaway remark that Pynchon "write[s]
> about rock &
> roll".) Considering what Pekar has written more
> closely (probably more
> closely than it deserves, but hey, I've got half an
> hour to kill), it
> appears to me that he's read _Vineland_ only and is
> using that novel as
> his yardstick (the unfunny, "sophomoric" humour; the
> "cutesy names" and
> products he cites, apart from Benny Profane, whose
> name appears on p. 1
> of _V._, are all from _Vineland_.)
>
> First rule for a book reviewer should be that they
> have read the book,
> neh?
>
> As to a lot of people not liking etc, well, in my
> experience they don't
> get very far into the longer books (V., GR) before
> putting them down. I
> think it's correct to say that a lot of people don't
> like the *idea* of
> Pynchon's novels, but I suspect that there are very
> few, if any, who
> actually read *all* of GR, or *all* of V., or *all*
> of M&D, and
> considered it to be bloated or pointlessly complex
> or not that funny. I
> mean, why would you bother? I agree that it is a
> hard slog at first to
> get "into" those books (M&D less so than the other
> two, I'd argue.) And
> I do know of one person who read Lot 49 and didn't
> find it funny or
> enjoyable, I must admit.
>
> I think both Lot 49 and Vineland (and to a lesser
> degree Slow Learner)
> were attempts to reach a broader audience via
> shorter, more
> "accessible" texts. Perhaps the attempts backfired,
> moreso in the case
> of Vineland -- Lot 49 left readers wanting more, and
> led nicely back to
> V. and forward to GR I think. But anyone who chances
> across Vineland
> isn't going to be all *that* inspired to pick up
> another of Pynchon's
> works, let alone persevere with it if they do.
> Still, Pekar basing his
> review of M&D, and his assessment of Pynchon's
> overall achievement and
> longevity, on either one of the two shorter novels
> -- particularly on
> Vineland, which is what he seems to have done -- is
> indefensible.
>
> best
>
> On 08/10/2005, at 7:50 AM, Will Layman wrote:
>
> > I'm just being the voice of reason here. A LOT OF
> PEOPLE don't like
> > Pynchon's writing. MANY people think his novels
> are bloated,
> > pointlessly complex and not that funny. Smart
> people can disagree.
> >
> > I happen to love Pynchon's work. I adore it and
> love it and want to
> > eat it for dinner.
> >
> > But also dig Harvey, with his everyman,
> no-bullshit view of the
> > world. And, you know what? His dialogue is a lot
> more realistic and
> > nuanced than Pynchon's.
> >
> > -- Will
> >
> > On 10/7/05 5:43 PM, "Rcfchess at aol.com"
> <Rcfchess at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> In a message dated 10/07/2005 5:42:21 P.M.
> Eastern Standard Time,
> >> WillLayman at comcast.net writes:
> >>> It goes without saying that I do not agree with
> Harvey. But to be
> >>> fair, that critique was written from the classic
> Pekar point of view
> >>> and while I think it reaches the wrong
> conclusions at every turn
> >>> it should give us all a fair notion of how
> Pynchon is viewed by a
> >>> "regular guy" reader, and a smart one at that.
> >> How smart can he be if he thinks that ALL of TRP
> is crap?!?
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
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