The 85 Weirdest, Day 69: Thomas Pynchon
Ian Livingston
igrlivingston at gmail.com
Sun Jul 27 16:29:06 CDT 2008
More prized
than read, Pynchon will likely go down in history famed as the guy who
played himself on The Simpsons with a bag over his head.
You know, Herman Melville, too, was despised by the critics and the
uneducated mob. if it weren't for a few people who were able to get beyond
the point of trying to make something brilliant seem lame so they could look
smart, Melville might have fallen into oblivion for much longer than he
did. The self-centered mind sees little of the world. "Weird" might be
seen as a great compliment from someone who sees no further than the t.v.
Of course, it is true that few people grok Melville even today. But he
remains the grand man of American fiction and more people have heard of the
white whale than any of Melville's contemporaries would have dreamed
possible.
And I do believe that TRP has given us metaphors that will long outlive his
detractors or memory of who they were. Has anyone researched the history,
for example of the "peace sign"? Of course, on Churchill's hand it was a
V-for victory, but it was next taken up by anti-nuke radicals in London in
the late fifties. It was from there it filtered into the popular non-verbal
lexicon. How much metaphorical breadth will the V accrue in our lives? In
the generations that follow us? How much of its depth will be revealed?
On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 9:21 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:
> Weird Tales
> Sat 26 Jul 2008
> The 85 Weirdest, Day 69: Thomas Pynchon
>
> The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of
> "The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years." We're breaking it
> down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85
> days!
>
> If not for space and time, everything would happen all at once. Maybe
> that's what happened to the reclusive THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– ) decades
> ago, as his books are chock-full of everything. Anarchism, Boy's Own
> fiction, Tesla, the aether, very very smart dogs, the Hollow Earth,
> and dirigibles — and that's just in his latest novel. More prized
> than read, Pynchon will likely go down in history famed as the guy who
> played himself on The Simpsons with a bag over his head.
>
>
> http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2008/07/26/the-85-weirdest-day-69-thomas-pynchon/
>
>
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