The flattened American landscape of minor writers
tbeshear
tbeshear at insightbb.com
Thu Feb 19 17:28:56 CST 2009
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.
>
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