A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Read all that, huh? So whatta ya think about that Pynchon guy, eh?
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Ande <andekgrahn at olympus.net>
> "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
> >
> >   -----------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >  
> >
> 
>