Pynchon/Vollmann

[Chris Broderick]

I can see some vague similarities between Pynchon &
Vollman (high word count, historical fantasias, focus
on the preterite), but there are certainly as many
differences (Pynchon likes slapstick & cartoons more,
Vollman seems more sexually obsessed and is much more
likely to intrude on the narrative).

I like some of what I've read of Vollman.  I really
liked The Royal Family, mainly because much of it took
place in the Tenderloin in San Fran, where I was
working at the time (there was even a cameo by DA
staffer and future mayoral candidate Matt Gonzalez!) 
You Bright & Risen Angels was an odd, interesting book
that has one of my pet themes (like AtD), electricity.
 But often in his books I have a hard time maintaining
that thread of interest that I don't have when I read
Pynchon (well, except for M&D, largely because I had a
hard time understanding the surveyer shoptalk that
made up so much of it, just as the shoptalk of balloon
aviators is part of the beginning of AtD.)

90 pages in, and so far so good.  Looking forward to a
brief interlude this Thanksgiving Day when I might
have a chance to read a few more pages.  The thing
that keeps popping back to mind is the phrase "fried
light".  The elephant in the room is the forthright
way in which he talks about issues of economic class,
which is true to the period, but not something that
contemporary literary fiction writers often want to
do.  Who wants to be the 21st-Century Zola?  But
Pynchon is willing to be many things, and one us that
hard-to-weasel-out-of category known as the "Political
Novelist".  No wonder Michiko hated it.  Ah, no
matter.

-Chris


 
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