The flattened American landscape of minor writers

[malignd at aol.com]

<<Updike Schmupdike! ... and all that follows.

You really are a tedious bag of wind.

Where to start?  Let's try here:

<< Particularly galling since TRP pitched in to defend Ian McEwan a 
while back, despite the mediocre quality of McEwan's wildly overrated 
work.>>

You rather grandly assume that your opinion of McEwan is also 
Pynchon's.  My guess is that Pynchon thinks more of McEwan than you do. 
 You'll have to work that out.

<< Bellow was an immense talent, though a pretty nasty person and prone 
to
cod philosophising and right-wing curmudgeonliness.>>

His politics, which you dislike, have what bearing on his writing?  Do 
they diminish, say, Humboldt's Gift?

<< Roth is great, but of course he has published some clunkers lately.>>

Roth is in his eighties.  It's a little much to expect him to match The 
Counterlife or Sabbath's Theatre or Operation Shylock or The Anatomy 
Lesson or any other of a dozen novels I might bore you with by 
mentioning.  But Enter Ghost and Everyman are pretty terrific 
meditations on aging and death, and The Plot Against America certainly 
belies his aging.

Where we probably find agreement is that I'm not a big fan of Updike's 
novels either, although I did like The Coup.  But I've been taken, in 
the wake of his death, by the extremely high regard in which he's held 
by writers I admire and am obliged to accept that what people--and not 
just people, but intelligent and diligent readers--love about writing, 
is various.  If one reads his book reviews and art criticism, one finds 
a commanding intelligence married to a graceful, rigorous, and 
eminently readable prose.  For some, this clearly carries over to is 
fiction, although I find them very different.

(I should add that an inability to finish his books speaks more about 
you than Updike.)

As to the Nobel, Updike's death eliminates him and Roth's age makes him 
seem unlikely as well (i.e., why not ten years ago?).  So maybe the 
odds on Pynchon are improved, although, personally, I don't think 
Vineland or M&D improve his chances.

Given the well-known/obscure big country/small country dance that they 
do every two years, or well-known one out of three, I would place my 
bets on Alice Munro over Pynchon for well-known, western hemisphere 
choice.  But he'll still be alive, one assumes, for a while yet.