Brown: A Pynchon for the nineties

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Nifty little essay (pdf available), reviews books on Pynchon by Hanjo 
Berressem, John Dugdale, McHoul and Wills, Deborah L. Madsen, Green, 
Greiner and McCaffery's _Vineland Papers_, and O'Donnell's _New Essays 
on 'Lot 49'_.

'A Pynchon for the Nineties' by Donald Brown.
_Poetics Today_ 18.1, Spring1997, pp. 95-112.	
	
Begins:
Thomas Pynchon's literary career can be said to span three distinct 
phases: the first, extremely productive phase extends from his first 
short story, published in 1958 while a student at Cornell, to his morre 
or less undisputed masterpiece _Gravity's Rainbow_, published in 1973. 
The second phase, from 1973 to 1984, is a period of silence, during 
which Pynchon's reputation became firmly consolidated in literary and 
academic circles. In faact, a "Pynchon industry" came into existence 
during these years in response to the widely acknowledged artistic 
complexity and intellectual breadth of his work. Pynchon's leegendary 
avoidance of public appearances and interviews, together with the theme 
of paranoia and the prevalence of countercultural attitudes in his 
work, led readers to detect an authorial persona who seemed to be in 
hiding, possibly hostile to or at least suspicious of critical acclaim. 
Ambivalence toward literary success was discernible in Pynchon's 
refusal of the William Dean Howells Award and in his sending the 
comedian "Professor" Irwin Corey to accept the National Book Award for 
him; the literary establishment's ambivalence toward Pynchon's works 
was made apparent in the Pulitzer Prize fiasco when the committee 
overrode the judges' decision to bestow on Pynchon the prestigious 
award for GR. But in the early 1980s Pynchon finally emerged from 
silence to commence what may be described as his "man-of-letters" phase 
(coinciding with the period of his MacArthur Foundation award): he 
introduced the reissue of a novel by the late Richard Farina, an old 
Cornell friend (1983); published an article 'Is It OK to be a Luddite?' 
(1984); released and introduced _Slow Learner_ (1984); wrote a review 
of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's latest novel for the NYTBR (1988); 
published _Vineland_ (1989), his first novel in seventeen years; and 
introduced a collection of works by the late Donald Barthelme. 
_Vineland_ received mixed reviews: on the positive side, many were glad 
to have him back; on the negative side, some accused him of lowering 
his standards and pandering to television addicts and the swiftly 
burgeoning nostalgia for the fashions,,issues and energy of late 1960s 
America. [...]

best