Editing Pynchon?

[Mark Kohut]

'brutal irony'?? 

--- On Fri, 8/7/09, Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Editing Pynchon?
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, August 7, 2009, 12:20 PM
> Personally I'm a lot more upset when
> the author of a short novel decides to waste my time. 
> I know going into a doorstop like AtD that it is going to be
> digressive, and that there are going to be points where I
> don't have a clear sense of what is going on.  That was
> my experience the first time through GR, and there are still
> points in that novel that are a bit of a slog.  I have
> a hard time imaging a single 'bigger picture' when reading
> Pynchon, but I will say that the overarching
> images/metaphors in GR were more prevalent than was the case
> in AtD. The first sentence of AtD strikes me as a brutal
> irony for the reader.
> 
> What is clear about Pynchon is that he is a picaresque
> novelist, rather than a narrative storyteller, or a plumber
> of psychological depths.  He's more willing to digress
> for any number of reasons, serious or frivolous ("for
> DeMille fur henchmen can't be rowing"?), which is seen by
> some as anathema in the modern novel.  To expect
> otherwise means that you are barking up the wrong trouser
> leg.
> 
> Chris Broderick
> www.myspace.com/christophermichaelbroderick
> 
> 
> "A good laugh is the best pesticide."
> -Vladimir Nabokov
> 
> From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Editing Pynchon?
> 
> My main beef with ATD is its scatteredness, divergences and
> characters
> with stories that seem pointless and seem to contribute
> little to any
> bigger picture, and the sheer number of them.  If an
> author is going
> to ask me to spend over 1000 pages with him, I ask him to
> not waste my
> time.
> 
> 
>       
>