Devil's advocate in Slate comments

[Matthew Ryan]

*If you want to read the book that Gravity's Rainbow aspired to be, read
Neal
Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, for it has many of the same concerns, it covers
the same period and theatre of operations, and it is a much better crafted
book.*

You've got to be fucking kidding me.


On 7/20/06, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Subject: Pynchon is a bad writer
> From: thetwomacduff
> Date: Jul 20 2006 3:52PM
>
> Many of the replies to danielmartinx have missed his main point, which was
> not that the university crowd have abandoned him, but that he is,
> technically, not a very good writer; that his prose is clotted and poorly
> constructed, and that the praise he has received has been for the supposed
> "ideas" content, not for the style, which is often excused, but seldom
> praised.
>
> Of course, every now and then, he pulls off a beautiful passage, viz., the
> opening of Gravity's Rainbow, but he isn't able to consistently write
> readable prose, or even construct moderately well-crafted sentences.
>
> The stuff of Pynchon's Books is, mostly, science fiction, but his
> technique
> is to swathe that stuff in a style that is self-consciously post-modern,
> and, as he has gone on and on, it is the style that has brought him his
> fans
> – and yes, I would agree, he has many, and that many are members or
> hangers-on of the "university crowd." But he's an appallingly slipshod
> writer, and, in my opinion, not a very clear thinker.
>
> If you want to read the book that Gravity's Rainbow aspired to be, read
> Neal
> Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, for it has many of the same concerns, it
> covers
> the same period and theatre of operations, and it is a much better crafted
> book.
>
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