A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[Billy Genocide]

The head of that nail, you hit it. As did this Clive James fellow. I have
long felt that was the case with Milton. I had a Milton professor who would
nod smugly and assure us that we need to read a passage several times
because it's oh so difficult. I for one have long hated Milton, (though this
seems to be becoming love-hate, as opposed to my relationship with Pynchon
which started as love and eventually became love-hate) probably because I
don't really struggle all that much to understand him and in the end look at
Paradise Lost and say, "a failed attempt at rationalizing an irrational
belief system. So what."

On 5/27/07, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 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
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> ------------------------------
>  Get your own web address.<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=49678/*http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL>
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>
>


-- 
Surrealism is the "invisible ray" which will one day enable us to win out
over our opponents.
-Breton
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