Who is the heir to Thomas Pynchon?

[tony antoniadis]

Agreed: but I am not asking this question in order to conveniently
bracket great writers.
I don't need continuity, which is thankful, because there isn't any. I
just want to know on what grounds we can say that a writer, any
writer, "takes the torch" from another, i.e., Saunders from Pynchon.
They are indeed both satirists, both wildly inventive, and both write
with singular voices--but what is it about Saunders that makes him an
*heir* to Pynchon? Is it the fact that he's a great satirist who
writes without malice?

Note, I do not believe that heir, in this sense, means "the person who
sounds or writes like the other person," viz your reference to
Cervates et al--but rather, a writer capable of creating an
emotional/intellectual impact reminescent of a previous writer, i.e.,
"wow, Pynchon made me feel like this before, and now, whoa--Saunders
is touching me in the same spot, which hasn't been touched in
years--keep touching, don't stop! and etc-- is that what an heir is?

or should we just get rid of the notion of heir altogether? I agree
that it is probably a term used to cogently dramatize talent for book
blurbs. But aren't there other ways?

Thanks for indulging me. 
Tony

On 9/18/05, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Was there any heir to Cervantes, Rabelais, Melville, Joyce? The uniqueness
> of Pynchon is that one has to try really hard to be an epigone of that
> writer, let alone 'heir'. There will be another great writer but he or she
> will be doing something different from what TRP's doing. He or she does not
> necesseraly have to be American or English-speaking for that matter. Who
> knows, maybe some Chinese genius has already completed his magnum opus that
> forever will change the landscape of contemporary literature.
> 
> Y.
> 
> >From: tony antoniadis <tony.antoniadis at gmail.com>
> >Reply-To: tony.antoniadis at gmail.com
> >To: pynchon-l-digest at waste.org
> >Subject: Who is the heir to Thomas Pynchon?
> >Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 17:23:35 +0100
> >
> >Quick question: what do people on this list think of George Saunders'
> >frequent title as "the heir to Pynchon" ? Doesn't sound right. Perhpas only
> >insofar as they're both satirists? I believe that Pynchon, in a very
> >generic
> >way, is a satirist, although he's doing about 7 other things with his text
> >while Saunders, I don't know... I've always thought of saunders as perhaps
> >a
> >juiced up Barry Hannah, at least that was evident with Civilwarland... I'm
> >just not satisfied with these blurbs that peg Saunders as the heir to TRP,
> >or Vonnegut, perhaps, who in my opinion was always dealing with Big Ideas
> >but used a very, how do I say it, boring language to convey them...
> >  Is Saunders the heir to Pynchon? If not, then who is?
> >  Tony
> 
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