Contemporary Fiction

Ya Sam takoitov at hotmail.com
Thu Sep 14 10:25:57 CDT 2006


>That's right. And if I thought a 'new Pynchon' was going to emerge, and
>I wanted to give myself the best chance of discovering him in an
>unmediated way, fresh, or 'from scratch', then I would avoid this and
>similar lists, online literary blogs and websites, books sections of
>newspapers, and anywhere else where a new novel might get mentioned
>before and/or after its release.

Maybe I'm digging my own grave here, but how the hell would you know about 
his existence?
O boy, am I not entagling myself into my own argument? I get your irony. So 
I will try to express my ideas as clear as possible. My point isn't about me 
walking into a bookstore, buying some unknown volume, reading it, and, 
Eurika! it's a new Pynchon! These days, especially with the Internet around, 
you will never be completely isolated from the outer world. What I mean is 
that there is a certain moment when there appears a certain writer, say, 
Thomas Pynchon (pre-Internet) or, OK, a new Pynchon (no way to escape the 
Internet), but he is not THE THOMAS PYNCHON yet, there are no awards, 
monographs, societies and e-mail lists yet. There is only your judgment and, 
most probably, the judgment of a friend or a reviewer (which may be very 
unfavourable by the way, there was a guy who said that Ulysses was 'a camera 
focused through a microscope on a worm-infested dunghill'). I do not exlude 
the possibility of a chance encounter without any mediator as well. So when 
I said 'without any advice from out there' by 'out there' I meant the 
already established framework of opinions that 'serves' a new name to you, 
whereas you could have discovered it more or less autonomously. I hope I 
make myself clear. My message isn't 'don't read newspapers and hack up your 
Internet cable', but rather don't wait for the establishment to recognise a 
new great writer in order to read him. Take chances, in other words. Oof. 
That would be it.

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