The flattened American landscape of minor writers

[tbeshear]

A factual correction: Roth is 75 (he'll be 76 next month, acc. to 
Wikipedia).  Regardless, I agree with your observations about his work.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <malignd at aol.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: The flattened American landscape of minor writers


>
>
> <<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.
>