Bloom on Pynchon

[Dustin Iler]

><< What I cannot understand is how Malign can sincerely doubt the opinions,
>  interpretations of text, and knowledge of a person (much less a list of
>  what, dozens, maybe hundreds; for who knows what lurks in the heart of 
>the
>  P-List?). >>
>
>I asked that a particular quote (initially quotes) that I found doubtful be
>cited; you find that hard to understand.
>
>So far no cite.



http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/

Second to last paragraph:

"Today there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at 
work and who deserve our praise. Thomas Pynchon is still writing. My friend 
Philip Roth, who will now share this "distinguished contribution" award with 
Stephen King, is a great comedian and would no doubt find something funny to 
say about it. There's Cormac McCarthy, whose novel "Blood Meridian" is 
worthy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," and Don DeLillo, whose "Underworld" 
is a great book."

As you can see, Bloom states that there are four contemporary American 
authors who are the best, and Pynchon is among them.




http://www.bostonreview.net/BR11.1/bloom.html


"There are a few figures writing now who are very powerful writers indeed. 
Probably the most powerful living Western writer is Samuel Beckett. He’s 
certainly the most authentic. In this country, it is Thomas Pynchon in 
prose, and as I say Warren, Merrill, Ashbery in verse. I think there is some 
problem of decline. Most of the figures who have enormous contemporary 
reputations in the American novel have very mixed achievements indeed – 
whether it is Saul Bellow or Norman Mailer, or who you will. Pynchon, at his 
best is, I think, a very remarkable writer. The current poets, the ones I’ve 
mentioned now, Merrill, Ashbery and so on, are remarkable poets. There is no 
living figure in the world’s poetry comparable to Montalli or to Wallace 
Stevens. Beckett is a major writer I think by any standards. I think as one 
goes toward the end of this century there is a certain entropy at work in 
the current state of the novel or poetry in German or French or Italian or 
Anglo-Americans. It is not perhaps what it was a generation ago. But how to 
account for that I’m uncertain."


Here are a slew of passages from his THE WESTERN CANON in which he talks up 
Pynchon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1573225142/ref=sib_dp_srch_pop/102-0830264-7161726?v=search-inside&keywords=pynchon