Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...

[bekah]

And DeLillo is another author who produced a nice series of  great 
books and then came Underworld.   After that, he went downhill pretty 
rapidly  (although he's still top notch, imo).

And then there's McCarthy (age 73) .   There were all the books 
leading up to Blood Meridian and then ...

I think it just happens sometimes.   An exceptional author pens an 
incredible fiction, his magnum opus,  and nothing he can do later 
will ever top it - or even be equal.   And yet he will write because 
that's what he does,  that's who he is.    Readers  come to expect 
something bigger and better and it's not going to happen.   (I'm sure 
there are come-backs, though.)

Some stuff:
DeLillo is  72 years old now, and he was  62 when Underworld was 
published in 1997.
DeLillo published 3 novels since (and 2 plays and a film).

McCarthy is 73 years old  now, and he was  51 when Blood Meridian was 
published in 1985.
McCarthy has published 5 novels since (and 2 plays and some film work).

Pynchon  is  70 years old now, but he was only 34 when Gravity's 
Rainbow was published in 1973.
Pynchon has published 3 novels since (and a collection of older short stories)


Fwiw,  I think there are a few ways in which Pynchon might have 
developed as a writer between GR and AtD.  The  juggling of all the 
stories  seems smoother to me in AtD than it did in  GR (although 
I've only read GR once).   I noticed that improvement in Mason & 
Dixon, too.     And I think his treatment of women has improved from 
sexist animal to pretty decent overall.   (But I'm not sure it's fair 
to judge a book by it's characters.)   Finally,  I like the change of 
tone from a  dark paranoia to a kind of light trust.   And that's 
essentially just another  totally subjective preference - Pynchon's 
dark paranoia is probably a whole lot more effective,  believable, 
consistent within the text, etc.   than the light trust.

Bekah
whose favorite is still CoL49
where dark paranoia meets trust
but the lights do not come on



At 10:30 AM -0400 6/13/07, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>Dostoevsky was fortunate that his greatest novel was his final one. 
>He had a long literary career during which he churned out a lot of 
>inferior stuff (he had to -- he was broke)along with Crime and 
>Punishment (his "V"?)and Notes From Underground (COL49?).  The 
>message for budding writers?  Croak after the big one.
>
>Laura
>
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>Sent: Jun 13, 2007 10:10 AM
>>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: Re: Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...
>>
>>I am old enough to remember when early readers of GR found it 
>>'boring' , plotless (fer sure),
>>   so overwritten as to be unreadable......so it goes.
>>  
>>   TRP knows what Time does to the world and its judgement....(see 
>>ATD, passim).
>>  
>>   MK
>>
>>Henry Winkler <rushm0r3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     I had the same reaction as Ray to AtD. Boring. Unlike GR, AtD 
>>was a grind. It took months to read because the writing was 
>>overripe and there was no real plot to give narrative tension. But 
>>what I was wondering, though, is why the decline in quality after 
>>GR? It's interesting to look at the publication dates of Pynchon's 
>>books:
>>  
>>   V..................1963
>>   CL49.............1966
>>   GR................1973
>>   Vineland........1990
>>   M+D..............1997
>>   AtD............... 2006
>>  
>>   Note the famous or notorious 17 year gap between GR and Vineland. 
>>WTF happened during those years people? We may never know, but one 
>>thing we do know is that the quality of Pynchon's books declined 
>>after that time.
>>  
>>   Fonzi
>>
>>   On 6/13/07, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:   I don't 
>>think there's any doubt that GR is superior to all other of
>>Pynchon's books.  It is more dense, more intense, more poetic, much
>>more obscure and more experimental.  I think it was both a product of
>>its time and of Pynchon's prime.  Also, I'm sure he's not smoking as
>  >much dope or dropping as much acid as he was back then.
>>
>>AtD doesn't suck, and mediocre Pynchon is still superior to most
>>other's best.  But I still think Vineland was a big stinker.
>>
>>David Morris
>>
>>On 6/12/07, Paul Mackin < paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>  On Jun 12, 2007, at 5:05 PM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>>>
>>>  >  what is it that makes GR superior to AtD?
>>>
>>>  My sneaking suspicion is that GR ISN'T really superior to AtD, or 
>>>isn't THAT much superior.
>>>
>>>  Our disappointment with the latest book may be mostly a product 
>>>of the passage of time.  Thirty five years ago Pynchon's 
>>>innovative approach to fiction writing was still fresh.   It no 
>>>longer is.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>      
>>---------------------------------
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