Your Arm's Too Short to Fight with Thomas Pynchon

[Natália Maranca]

Well I'm inclined to believe P. would agree with some of his comments, given
his antipathy towards Lot 49.
But the guy is so passional. I think Pynchon took off with his wife.


On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 10:48 PM, Michael Bailey <
michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> he doesn't seem to have much of a case
>
> good things about  making up names -
> a) you avoid possible lawsuits, or even inflicting discomfiture
> to people whose names you're using
>
> b) John Gardner's advice about wanting to induce a dream-state
> and doing nothing to jar the reader out of the spell (though Lord
> knows Gardner's own plots have some odd developments)
> may be good or not so much
> (that's a meta-question)
> - (though being able to tell the difference between fiction
> and reality is one of the criteria of trust for many of us, and immersion
> in a dream isn't the main thing I'm seeking in fiction)
> but the mere fact of a character having a name I haven't encountered
> before
> isn't gonna un-suspend my disbelief
> -- I've met too many people with improbable names IRL
>
> "reduced to its conventional elements, it is basically a
> conventional detective story"
> It is so _not_...
> I'll grant that the involvement of an "innocent" into a plot
> is a convention that he plays with, but good gravy,
> what happens is that Oedipa encounters the mysteries
> of society and (perhaps for the first time in her life)
> becomes interested and involved in them - it's a
> Bildungsroman (the fact that I'm prone to calling
> lots of books that, such as 1984, is noted...)
>
> "the ... ending is clearly meant to suggest that we cannot
> know the "truth" but it does so in the lamest way"
> piffle - the ending shows Oedipa preparing to become
> involved as a collector, utilizing her executor's privilege
> to take her place in the interpretation of history and suggests
> that we go and do likewise.  What we will find will differ
> since our own heritage will be different - it doesn't so much
> matter what's printed on the stamps as that we show up
> at the auctions of our own life...
>
> 'it's increasingly difficult to develop any sort of empathy
> towards [the characters] and their plight"
> increasing from when: from the point when he laid down
> the book and started thinking of ways to diss it?
> If you watch Oedipa, she develops within the book,
> and an attentive reader develops along with her: from
> an insular self-concerned existence to a compassionate
> concern with unpacking historical facts to a comprehension
> of the human passions and actions they are built of
>
> "I'm told that the novel is funny but I'm afraid that its irony
> is too flat to make me laugh or even chuckle in the self-satisfied
> and sophisticated manner that I (unfortunately) often do."
> huh?  irony?  I'm not superclear on irony anyway,
> (the definitions in Wikipedia seem to suggest that irony
> is hardly ever funny-ha-ha)
> but I don't think it's a hallmark of Pynchon.
> He's more of a satirist, isn't he, and the laughs come more from
> athletic wordplay, don't they?  And when they come, they
> really are funny ha-ha.
>
> "I'm really unimpressed with his use of science and technology"
> hmm, I'm a bit contrarian here, but I've never felt that was
> his focus - seems to me that he's more concerned with the
> human heart (and that's why I love his books)
>
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