Questions ..

[Paul Nightingale]

The review is part of marketing, often on behalf of a text that will be of
interest to the buying public if not the discerning reader. This distinction
is implicit when the reviewer both advertises and despairs the need for
advertising (after Leavis' attack on the book industry in Mass Civilisation
and Minority Culture, perhaps) because the discerning reader shouldn't need
to be influenced/manipulated by so crude a stratagem. Hence the ATD
reviewer's frequent claim that only fans will enjoy the novel, fans by
definition being incapable of the level of critical discernment shown by the
superior reviewer. At the same time, of course, you might say the dissing of
ATD is a mark of P's status as a serious/great writer: if this were 'just
another' thriller, say, one written for the 'mass market' the reviewer
wouldn't bother.

Hence also, perhaps, a resignation to being ignored? For who reads reviews?
You can only read them properly after finishing the text under review, which
presumably a lot of hardcore ATD fans are doing now.

Sometimes a response (not a dialogue) is possible when a reader (sometimes
the author, but this is unlikely to be Pynchon, unless he writes under an
assumed name) is allowed to publish on the letters page. Currently there are
online opportunities to respond to articles, reviews or anything else. This
offers the possibility of a kind of dialogue. However, cultural snobbery
being what it is, criticism so defined needs the context of the academic
community.

Reviews might be incorporated as a kind of prologue to 'proper' criticism,
as with the chapter devoted to M&D reviews in Clerc's Mason & Dixon &
Pynchon.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Michel Ryckx
> Sent: 16 December 2006 14:26
> To: Tim Strzechowski
> Cc: Pynchon-L
> Subject: Re: Questions ..
> 
> Criticism is a dialogue.  A review is a monologue.  As a consequence,
> criticism has a history.