A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[Mark Kohut]

I am in the book business and know many, many, too many people who do nothing but read 
  novels.   Most of them, most of the book business does not read Pynchon because he is too hard...........and "novels', even good ones. are supposed to be easy reading.....to most 'voracious readers......
   
  The major flaw of Pynchon fans, IMHO---and I am writing this thru the timber in my own eye---is to love 'getting it", being in on the 'secrets".....most of which are just a starting point for objective evaluation.....
   
  Clive James in his recent book, Cultural Amnesia, does a nice riff on how we (in general) have overrated many difficult epical works----from The Faerie Queen, thru Paradise Lost thru scores of others because we gave so much time and effort to simply "getting it'---and retroactively want to feel it was all worth it.

Dan Hansong <danhansong at 163.com> wrote:
              Hi, here is  Howard Schneider's shitty prophecy. Please share
  with us your reading spectrum and make a testimony against
  or for this iconoclastic judgment on the Pynchonites. 
   
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  I have a hunch that Pynchon's zealous fans don't read
many novels, so they're not bothered by his flaws. They
cherish their idol because he presents the world as they
know it: science, technology, history, politics, high and low
culture all mashed together to make a garish gallimaufry.
The results might be messy but so is the society the
Pynchonites inhabit.
   
  ----Review by Howard Schneider
  May-June 2007  THE HUMANIST
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