A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[Ande]

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

Read all that, huh? So whatta ya think about that Pynchon guy, eh?

short answer:  he has funny teeth

long answer:

read or referred to, books were brought out of boxes, often as a result 
of reading Pynchon and the p-list---so relevant to the Critics comments 
about 'zealous fans'-- it was a special year, spent mostly at home (or 
climbing stairs at the local beach) so that my ravaged immune system 
wasn't exposed to mutant virus.  I don't know much about "the Pynchon 
guy", except that we have some friends and places (West coast places and 
folk music friends) in common.  V. blew my socks off at 19, the  same 
year I was introduced to Joyce and Dostoevsky, Gravity's' Rainbow (and 
Rilke) occupied my twentieth year, along with Hegel, Heiddegger, 
Feuerbach and Russian poet Osip Mandlestam.  Pynchon wasn't part of the 
academy, and probably not fair to say that was why I  left school, but 
it may have influenced the decision.   I celebrated my daughter's  being 
able to read her own bedtime stories by reading the just published 
Vineland, my first contemporary adult fiction in six years at the time.  
The purchase of a "first edition" hardbound copy of Mason&Dixon was a 
celebration of full-time, professional employment (to think that they 
are .99 cents + shipping on-line).  I read about Wanda Tynasky and the 
plist when I was "reading' the AVA and other popular media for the OED.  
I re-read V. to prepare for my daughters departure to college (to remind 
myself of the quantum leaps that 19 year olds can experience).  I packed 
my boxes to (finally) go back to school myself, only to be diagnosed 
with Cancer--decided that GR would keep me distracted,  I had never read 
COL49, and I found a note on Slate about impending AtD (and 
plist)....and so the previous post.

Does that make me "a zealous fan" -- it takes a discerning bookshelf 
browser to note the 'completeness" of the Pynchon collection, but I do 
turn a little red when "caught" with GR and M&D open, the inked-up 
notebook, the OED, the Powerbook, and AtD (and Iceland Spar book weight) 
spread out --  but the embarrassment is just as much self-consciousness 
at having the illness imposed  "leisure"  to play -- I always think of 
zealousness as implying a tendency to proselytise, and while I did give 
away a copy of AtD to a favourite client, and perhaps disagreed when 
friends or family parroted the reviews---off list I don't wear a blazing 
P on my Sweatshirt (or a Property of Candlebrow University Athletic Dept 
t-shirt). 

I quoted Pynchon (and Rilke) is an essay for College (re)Admission, they 
said yes and gave me 50k a year, so it has not been an unprofitable 
association.




> -------------- 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
>>>
>>>  -----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>    
>>
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