James Wood vs. LRB's Thomas Jones, Redux

[Carvill, John]

Thomas Jones's reply to James Wood's letter re. Jones's review of IV:

"I'm amused that where I wrote 'people', James Wood seems to have read 'reviewers in the mainstream American press' (Letters, 5 November). But to accept that narrow definition, and to answer his question (when has anyone complained that Pynchon's characters aren't proper, 'sympathetic' characters?): Michiko Kakutani said of Against the Day in the New York Times that 'because these people are so flimsily delineated, their efforts to connect feel merely sentimental and contrived.' And Laura Miller on Salon.com said: 'This is the stuff of tragedy, but since the people it sort of happens to are flimsy constructions, we don't experience it as tragic.' So there you go."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/letters