Brown: A Pynchon for the nineties

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 07/09/2005, John Carvill wrote:

> Don't really want to start up the old Vineland debate(s) yet again....
>
>> 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. [...]
>
> ...but: how could Pynchon be "pandering to television addicts" just by
> writing a book with a lot of TV references in it? Would the TV addicts
> ever get to enjoy the pandering? Wouldn't they have to read the book to
> find out how much TV was in it?

Brown takes issue with that sort of assessment too, though from the 
point of view of context. Something like, in thirty years' time, "Froot 
Loops" and "Nestle Quik" will probably strike the reader in much the 
same way that "Thayer's Slippery Elm" does now.

But I'd also make the point that, unless you're very familiar with 
those tv shows, you're not going to get much out of Pynchon's 
references and allusions. Non-tv watchers would have been disappointed. 
And maybe Pynchon was deliberately trying to reach a wider, or 
different, audience. And there's also the point that he must have been 
pretty familiar with shows himself to be able to refer to them so 
accurately.

best