A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[Ande]

"garish gallimaufry"

I would have answered sooner, but like a "true pynchonian" I had to go
look up gallimaufry, got distracted by O・pit・u・la・tion
/n./[L. /opitulatio/, fr. /opitulari/ to bring help.] The act of helping
or aiding; help. /[Obs.]/ /Bailey./, which was in a side bar at
answer.com--started thinking that gallimaufry (despite being garish)
isn't much of an insult--so checked with the OED (Universal Dictionary
1933), which confirmed "absurd" (a ridiculous medley 1551) --so clearly
Mr. Schneider's intent was to insult...but pulled out E. Partridge
(Origins) just to be sure, and there in our Norman heritage, is root
"galer" --to rejoice, make merry---

Can't go much further as the complete OED and other more weighty texts
are in storage--For your Survey--Here are the novels pulled out of
storage in the last year and half to get me through a spate of corporate
medicine, and read or re-read in my chemo addled haze:

Rushdie (Satanic Verses and Haroun), Paul Bowles (Spiders House
Sheltering Sky, Collected Letters), Osip Mandelstam (Four volumes of
various collected verse), Nabokov (Ada, Pale Fire, Transparent Things),
Arturo Perez-Reverte (various volumes of Euro-Mystery), Sigrud Undsett
(Kristen Lavansdotter x 3), Peter Carrey, Bruce Chatwin, James Joyce
(Collected Works), Gertrude Stien (excerpts from Making of Americans)
William Vollmann (Argall, Rising Up, Rising Down) John McPhee (Annals of
the Former World), Kipling (Kim, Short Stories), TE Lawrence (Seven
Pillars), Czelaw Milosz (Collected Works), Dave Eggers, David Foster
Wallace (Selected writings) Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver), Wm
Shakespeare (Tempest) Adrienne Rich, Rilke (various volumes) 20th Cent
French Poetry, Mallarme, The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Cormac McCarthy
(The Road and impending Coen Bros movie inspired a complete re-read) Ian
McEwan (Saturday) Gary Synder (Back on Fire), Dante (Inferno), Stendahl
(Red and Black), Middlemarch (with the AS Byatt intro), Melville
(Bartleby the Scrivener), Umberto Eco (non-fiction and Island of Day
Before), Lew Welch (Ring of Bone), AS Byatt (Possession, The Djinn in
the Nightingales Eye) David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green),
Hesse (Illustrated Steppenwolf), Frank Baum (Little Wizard Stories),
Herge (various TinTin volumes to read to the neighbour boys), Odanntje
(English Patient), Soldier Poetry from Iraq) Kate Atkinson (A Good
Turn)---this doesn't include extensive non-fiction reading (Water Rights
in the Middle East, Old Social Classes and Revolutionary Movements in
Iraq, Books on Genocide --Samantha Power, Problem from Hell, and Gen
D'allaire's Autobiography, Nuclear Non-proliferation and Oppenheimer,
lots of Robert Kaplan, Julian Jaynes, Gregory Bateson, Oswald Spengler,
Feynman Lectures---(And of course ALL of Pynchon), and the Emily
Dickenson Random Epigraph Generator (daily Dickenson from the Complete
Works)

This is what is easy, timely and visible: doesn't include the library
list ( I tried Gary S. Absurdistan, didn't like it, re-read some
Dickens, Jane Austin, Thomas Hardy...), the contents of the boxes in
storage, formative books and authors (Thomas Mann, Goethe, more
Melville, Cervantes), or books "borrowed" by my daughter at Christmas
(Roald Dahl, Complete Works of Borges, Neil Gamain)

Probably reflects the lack of a televison (but I do have a 3 at time
Netflix subscription) and I have a Chicago Manual of Style, John
Hollander's Rhymes Reason, above mentioned OED and Origins, have taking
a few literature classes.

Use as you will.

Ande

Dan Hansong wrote:

>(A plain text version of Original_HTML1.html follows):
>
>   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
>
>   -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  
>