AtD and 9/11

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Yeah, Pynchon made several huge statements that pertained to Watergate, LSD, hot pagan chicks with owls etc., in GR. But I think Pynchon's tone has become progressively lighter as time has worn on him. That little excerpt from ATD in the Penguin catalog---that's no hoax foax, it's obviously the excerpt that Pynchon wanted out there, he's responsible for that blurb, after all, it's the very first thing in the catalog and, judging from font selection, layout and other art design decisions obviously worked out in committee, that catalog thinks "Against the Day" is some kind of a great big deal. You "think he strives for more enduring, big-picture, and more abstract issues", I think Pynchon's been searching for longer, broader and more complicated puns, sillier and funnier acronyms, more bizzare character names with more layers of allusion and intertextual reference, more surrealism, more disjunct combos like osteopaths in gunfights in the Olde Wild West. I think that man's true craft 
has become, primarily, the craft of a comedian.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Ghetta Life" <ghetta_outta at hotmail.com>
 
Don't you think he did "make a statement about modern America" in GR.  And he already did a current time novel in VL (my least favorite).  If you mean couldn't he write a novel about Bush, Iraq, terrorists, war-mongers, and so on, I'm sure he could.  But then it wouldn't be a work that he would have spent years researching for background.  I think he strives for more enduring, big-picture, and more abstract issues.
 
Ghetta
 
On Aug 14, 2006, at 7:58 PM, David Gentle wrote:

"Don't you think that if he wanted to make a statement about modern  America he could?"

 >DG

I think he did in "49" and "Vineland", and I like both of them very, very much. Again, there seems to be a collective need to make Pynchon "The Great American Novelist". At one time Pynchon might have wanted to be the next Melville but I'll bet that right now he'd be happy to be the next S. J. Perelman.