A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Last book read:  Neuromancer by W. Gibson.  Now reading:  Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott.  Favorite authors:  Pynchon, Dostoevsky, Lessing, Thomas Mann.

-----Original Message-----
>From: bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
>Sent: May 27, 2007 12:39 PM
>To: danhansong at 163.com, "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans
>
>Well I read a lot of novels as well as some non-fiction and I'm a fan 
>of Pynchon.   I recently read "The Terrors of Ice and Darkness by 
>Christoph Ransmeyr,  The Memoirs of Hadrian by Margarite Yourcenar, 
>Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee,  Falling Man by Don DeLillo (about 10 
>novels this month, total, so far).    I also read non-fiction and am 
>in the middle of  The Omnivore's Dilemma at the moment,  just 
>finished 1491,  The God Delusion and The Great Transformation by 
>Karen Armstrong.    Essays,  Who Owns the Past?  by Inga Clendinnen 
>(60+ pages)
>
>  I've got The Road (a reread) ,   A Suitable Boy and a whole 
>shelf-full  of other books (about 120) lined up for possible summer 
>reading.
>
>Who are my favorite authors?   Pynchon,  McCarthy,  Lessing, Ali 
>Smith, DeLillo,  Ozick,  Murakami,  Ishiguro, Vollmann, Clendinnen 
>(history) Eco (fiction and non-).   I follow McEwan and Coetzee but 
>they're not necessarily favorites.   I like non-US authors I can find 
>in good translation - Ransmeyr, Yourcenar,  Kadare,  Marquez Garcia.
>
>That Schneider person just has this wrong -  and there might be a 
>reason for the history, science, technology, politics and culture 
>being "all mashed together."    I don't learn about all this stuff in 
>the "correct" order - I find out about some stuff years and  years 
>after it happened.  So what?  This makes me a part of a "messy... 
>society..."  ?  (lol)
>
>  Specific and historically accurate dating is of less importance in 
>this novel than the sense of the times and I think Pynchon was 
>writing with a specific view toward what was known at those times and 
>in the way those times knew it.     Pynchon is not giving us a 
>history or a science book;  he's giving us a slightly different way 
>of perceiving and organizing  the information that was in those books 
>about 100 years ago along with a totally fictional cast and crew to 
>keep it light (so to speak).
>
>Bekah
>
>
>At 9:52 PM +0800 5/27/07, Dan Hansong 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.
>>
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>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
>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>