Who is the heir to Thomas Pynchon?

[Will Layman]

If Pynchon has an heir, I think it would have to be one of the novelists who
has followed his lead in writing large, encyclopedic books that range wildly
through history or through a specific culture and also through genre.

Delillo has done this some, but he's more a contemporary of TRP's, not an
heir.  And, for me, his best books have NOT been his big sprawling ones.

So the leading candidate would have to be Powers, who has used this
technique many times to great effect.  Without Pynchon's zany humor, to be
sure, but with a similar erudite reference to different areas of knowledge
and history.

The other, and I know you guys hate to hear this name mentioned here, is
clearly David Wallace.  INFINITE JEST in Pynchonian in technique however you
measure it.  Wallace uses Pynchon's techniques and his mad humor.  I happen
to think JEST is a masterpiece.

My definition may not be the only one, but it does limit the field some.

-- Will

On 9/18/05 2:07 PM, "tony antoniadis" <tony.antoniadis at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>