Questions ..

[Mark Kohut]

Tore Rye Andersen,

I work in publishing circles and learned this about ATD:. The galleys which
reviewers get to read were much later to them than for any other Pynchon
novel, it seems. Around a month or so before pub date and it is the longest
novel as is known. Most galleys go to potential reviewers at least 3 months
ahead of pub date, often more for "long lead' vehicles for important books.

So, reviews that will be the start of critical understanding of ATD have
been fewer, perhaps, as you mention.



Mark



On 12/16/06, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Michel:
> >Criticism is a dialogue.  A review is a monologue.
>
> >From an overlapping angle: A review is intended for those who have not
> read
> a book, to assist them in deciding whether to do so.
>
> A-and Monte:
> >>Criticism is intended for those who have read it, to engage them in
> >>dialogue
> about what they found there.
>
> >>Often enough, of course, reviews take the place of criticism for readers
>
> >>who
> seek not further enagagement but ready-made opinions of what they have
> read
> (or even of what they haven't).
>
> Yes, these would certainly seem to be the archetypes of reviews and
> criticism, but the lines between the two are often quite fluid indeed.
> I've
> often - far, far too often - read monological rants disguising themselves
> as
> 'criticism'; rants where the author of the article is more interested in
> positioning him- or herself vis-a-vis certain predominant theories than in
>
> actually trying to understand what the damn object of analysis is in fact
> trying to say. Such poor excuses for criticism are in my opinion at least
> as
> undiscriminating as the hastily typed review. In an ideal world, criticism
>
> *is* a dialogue, but in reality criticism is all too often a series of
> alternating monologues, where the authors aren't interested in what their
> colleagues or their common topic have to say.
>
> I will certainly also agree that reviews are mostly monologues/ready-made
> opinions, but we shouldn't forget those brilliant reviews which *are* in
> fact foundations for the criticism to follow. We haven't really seen any
> of
> those reviews with AtD. Reviewers simply weren't given enough time with
> the
> book, so the fault is as much Penguin Press' as the reviewers, IMO. There
> have been some good, long reviews of the novel, notably by John Leonard
> and
> Liesl Schillinger, but those reviews were mostly good because they were
> not
> stupid, if that makes any sense: they got the gist of what the novel was
> actually about and discussed a few imporatnt topics, but despite being
> clever and well-written, I don't expect them to be foundations for future
> criticism of AtD: The reviewers simply didn't have enough time to sit down
> and map out a larger picture of AtD's position in Pynchon's oeuvre, or its
> position in modern American literature.
> Those kinds of reviews do exist, though, and we don't have to look far to
> find them: Richard Poirier's review of GR in Saturday Review of the Arts,
> published merely five days after GR, is an excellent example of a review
> which set the tone for much of the early criticism of the novel. It is
> really an astounding review, but as Gerald Howard wrote in his essay in
> Book
> Forum, Poirier also had plenty of time to prepare it. Another brilliant
> review is Louis Menand's review of M&D, which also seems to have
> influenced
> much subesequent criticism. Both reviews demonstrate the once in a while
> reviews really can be precursors for the later criticism - such reviews
> are
> much too rare, though, and in the case of AtD so far unmaterialized.
>
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