A Reviewer's Hunch about Pynchon's Fans

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thanks, Ande, for both the short and long answers.  It's good Pynchon has provided solace for you during a difficult time.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ande <andekgrahn at olympus.net>

>
>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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