Contemporary Fiction

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Let's see, read a number of Thomas Mann novels many years ago, loved them and look forward to reading the recent translation of Magic Mountain as soon as I find the time. Don't think I really understand Joyce yet, having read Ulysses before I was ready. Am fascinated by by "Wake", have two copies and various attendant texts like Cambell's "Skeleton Key". It's both a piece of "Great Lit" and a tremendous puzzle/education but not necessarly comprehensible. What I've gotta do is pick up on the early work, like "Dubliners" before picking up Ulysses again. As for Proust, I'm 415 pages into "In The Shadow Of Young Girls In Flower" and nothing, nothing, nothing can touch it. 

I'll throw in "49" and "Vineland" and "V" and "Mason & Dixon" if the target is Mann. Lotsa similarities there.

If it's Proust or Rilke, "49" and "GR". Forgot Rilke, didn't you? 

Joyce is his own planet.

Not a hierarchical list, just notes on possiable connections.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> On 9/14/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> > By the way including Pynchon in with Proust, Joyce and Mann is not doing him a 
> favor. The jury is still out and will continue  to be for years. At the very 
> least wait until he's dead.
> 
> In terms of his whole oeuvre, I'd say you're correct.  But I'd say GR
> reached their level.  For me, the jury's had its say there.
> 
> -- 
> David Morris