Pynchonesque Rushdie

[Ya Sam]

You won't beleive me but 'Foucault's Pendulum' was actually fun to me. If 
even 'painful' sometimes. Eco has a peculiar sense of humour that might have 
been lost on Rushdie altogether. As for 'gobbledygook', well, Rushdie is 
full of it, all those India-specific words you need a glossary to understand 
purposefully encumbered one upon another in his novels. Finding out their 
meanings have been painful to me, and that was not as rewarding as finding 
out Eco's allusions. And to demote such a serious book as 'Foucault's 
Pendulum' to the rank of 'a computer game', that's puerile to me. Rushdie, 
re-read the bloody book!!!


>From: "Henry" <hmusikar at speakeasy.net>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re:  Pynchonesque Rushdie
>Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:26:00 +0000
>
>I agree with Rushdie on Eco. Eco was a great essayist and semiotician, and 
>he was entertaining, e.g. fun, as such, but his novels give me a pain.
>Rushdie, even when not great, is... fun! What's the matter with fun, i.e. 
>Rossini? :-)
>HM
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ya Sam [mailto:takoitov at hotmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, October 9, 2006 03:08 PM
>To: torerye at hotmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: RE: Pynchonesque Rushdie
>
>What also surprised me is that despite his benevolence towards Pynchon
>(especially his review about Vineland) he was incredibly hostile towards
>Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum'. That's his opinion, of course, but I
>think that he was a bit unjust towards Eco, applying to his book categories
>that were not relevant.
>
>just some snippets from 'Rushdie's Umberto Eco' in 'Imaginary Homelands',
>Granta Books, 1991
>
>"Pynchon once wrote a short story called 'Under the Rose', its title an
>Englishing of the Latin sub rosa. Foucault's pendulum, the obese new volume
>from Umberto Eco, is an illuminatus-novel for the end of the eighties, a
>post-modernist conspiracy fiction about, I suppose, the world under the 
>name
>of the rose. It is, i regret to report, a very faint Eco indeed of those 
>old
>Pynchonian high jinks. It is humourless, devoid of characterization,
>entirely free of anything resembling a credible spoken word, and
>mind-numbingly full of gobbledygook of all sorts. Reader: I hated it." (p.
>270)
>
>"And, because he's [Eco] enough of an intellectual to know that hokum is
>hokum, he has not written an 'innocent' late-sixties illuminatus-novel, but
>a 'knowing' version, a fiction about the creation of a piece of junk 
>fiction
>that then turns knowingly into that piece of junk fiction. Foucault's
>Pendulum is not a novel. It is a computer game'. (271)
>
>
>My comment would be that I enjoyed 'Midnight's Children' a lot. But
>'Shalimar the Clown' is a clownish book about a clown whose author has
>become a literary clown by abusing his old repertoir of clownery.
>
>
>
> >From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> >To: takoitov at hotmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: RE: Pynchonesque Rushdie
> >Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:41:24 +0200
> >
> >Yep, I totally agree - perhaps they should have been more Pynchonesque,
> >embarrassingly or not.
> >
> >
> >>From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
> >>To: torerye at hotmail.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
> >>Subject: RE: Pynchonesque Rushdie
> >>Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:42:09 +0300
> >>
> >>Last novels by Rushdie came out as simply embarassing.
> >>
> >>
> >>>From: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> >>>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >>>Subject: Pynchonesque Rushdie
> >>>Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:49:31 +0200
> >>>
> >>>Salman Rushdie has sold two unpublished novels from the 1970s to Emory
> >>>University, Atlanta. One of these, 'The Antagonist', was, according to
> >>>Rushdie, "embarrassingly Pynchonesque."
> >>>
> >>>http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/search/mmsearch.asp?query=&sectid=5&articleid=10820062118101082006211647265&pubyear=2006&pubday=9&pubmth=10
> >>>
> >>>I wonder whether Pynchon's scrapped novel from the 1970s, 'The Japanese
> >>>Insurance-Adjustor', was also "embarrassingly Pynchonesque"....
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>_________________________________________________________________
> >>Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
> >>http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
> >>
> >
> >
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
>http://search.msn.com/
>
>
>

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/