Newsday review of AtD

[rich]

funny, but do "realistic fiction" writers get nailed for not including
things outside their own characters heads?

you wouldn't really know what kind of life people live today by reading
mainstream or realistic fiction, namely the effect technology is having in
our lives

it's just stupid--richard ford's frank bascomb--is he not a symbol as well?

my point is literature is legion--it's not this or that. just don't see
considering the canvas Pynchon is working on/within that these kind've
criticisms are a problem for me.

but I'm not a huge fiction reader anymore
rich


On 11/17/06, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No spoiler here.
> This line from the review repeats the "round versus flat" conversation
> we've had here about Pynchon, but in slightly different terms.  Still,
> the idea of Pynchon's character's being symbols rather that people is
> the issue at hand:
>
> "his fiction is shaped at its deepest levels by the basic concepts of
> these fields[information theory, mathematical physics, cosmology],
> which are, for Pynchon, absolutely essential to understanding the
> history and inner logic of the way we live now. All of this places
> considerable demands upon the attention of a reader - but even more,
> perhaps, on the lives of his characters, who constantly threaten to
> turn into allegorical emblems or algebraic cyphers."
>
> The review is very positive, but I think he's hit the character
> issue's nail on the head (and he thinks that this should be obvious to
> anyone who's read GR).
>
> David Morris
>
> On 11/17/06, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Scott McLemee's review for Newsday is available
> >
> >
> http://www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkcov4977785nov19,0,7633389.story?coll=ny-bookreview-headlines
>
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