IVIV (1) "Uphill and invisible" p4

[John Carvill]

>Tore Rye Andersen:
>
> David Morris:
>
>> I agree that this passage stood out as particularly poetic, and quite
>> brief for Pynchon.
>
> Yes. As alice says, Pynchon still has the ability to write beautifully,
> and it almost feels like he can toss off passages like this at will
> (see also p. 98, or the ending of the novel, which is pitch-perfect).
> But as I argued, this time around Pynchon deliberately seems to curb
> himself, deliberately tries doing something other than what comes
> natural to him. And this restraint also extends itself to the poetic
> language, which despite small flashes of beauty is much less present
> in IV than in Pynchon's previous novels.
>

Definitely. You can feel him holding back on the Pynchon pedal. Like
the contrast knob of his prose style has been turned down a notch or
two. Please mix in you own metaphors..

> Why this apparent restraint? Discuss.
>

Obvious suggestion is that he's trying to keep it light, to write a
book that reaches a wider audience? If he has failed to achieve
big-time mainstream success in the past it's been due to his
pereceived 'difficulty'. The aspects of Pynchon that make him the
writer he is, are the very aspects which prevent him gaining a wider
readership; therefore to reach that audience, he's deliberately toning
them down, even cutting them out entirely. That's just a speculation
of course.

And, it doesn't prevent him from occasionally relenting and throwing
out a quick flash of the quintessentially Pynchonian.