The Anti-Pynchon Author of Note?

[Mark Kohut]

I would love to explore Roth's works as we do Pynchon here.........he is major.   He is imperfect...no warmth in the upcoming one yet fiercely good......
 
he does not need "decoded" in the way Pynchon often does.................But I guess we
need an R-list for that...
 
Here is a framework I have brought up before regarding different KINDS of  first-rate writers:
Comes from Schller's On the Naive and the Sentimental in Poetry...................
 
But, as has been stated, can be applied to all written artworks. (see The Encyclopedia of Romanticism at Google Books. Put in the above Schiller title...you will get an excellent explication
of the two polar meanings.)
 
The distinction seems important in our current critical/reviewing world. More in a moment.
 
Differences along a continuum....
1) Naive:deal with nature---that is more realistic presentations of the world and the people in it.
Their faults can be shown; their lives are shown.....the problem for "ART' is to raise the documentary to symbolic meaning....scenes that universalize......characters that do....
themes that tell of the Age, the Universal..........................
 
2) Sentimental: to start with the abstract "ideal'.....to critique like an essayist---or to set up archetypal scenes.or new frames............The problem on this end for "ART" is to forgo believable "life" for framed 'ideas'..........
 
another aspect might be what we call 'the head" vs."the heart"....in artists...........
 
Austen to Joyce is, maybe  one way to characterize one take on the distinction. (The notion, whoever we put in as examples, allows for either end of the continuum to have high Artists---and failures).
 
The amount of allusions/erudition in a writer's work--per henry on p's 'encyclopedic writing"---- is usually part of the distinction, since
'allusion/erudition" is not "of nature", direct experience, by definition. Complex language vs.
more transparent language.
 
Frost thru Eliot.....Hemingway to Faulkner........
 
Or, with adjustments, Roth and Pynchon?   We can all think of the lesser writers who are like but not even close to Roth..........................and we can do the same for Pynchon......
 
Here is one way this distinction lives on today, i suggest. many critics of "the novel"....
fault the Pynchon way as NOT having  rounded life-like characters...(sometimes excepting M & D)..we have all talked about this................
 
Whereas, Roth usually does----questions being how "real', how just [in treatment of women, say], how generalizeable...how they fit within a full vision of life?      
 
Q for Roth readers, particularly women, maybe?....why do so many women NOW seem to like Roth as much as many men seem always to have, whereas before 19??, many/most ?seemed to find him misogynistic?
 
Let's keep talking.
 
 
 
 


--- On Fri, 6/20/08, Henry <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Henry <scuffling at gmail.com>
Subject: The Anti-Pynchon Author of Note?
To: "'Pynchon Liste'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Date: Friday, June 20, 2008, 10:07 AM

Philip Roth?  Constantly interviewed author of books concerned with up to no
more than three individuals, but ultimately always just one; an author whose
writings are never placed in times that are before his own personal time or
in alien geographies (never encyclopedic, and no encyclopedia required).
A-and his stories include elements of his life that he denies are
auto-biographical.  

HENRY MU
Information, Media, and Technology Consultant

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/henrymu


      
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