On Roth: pynchon-l-digest V2 #6673

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut wrote:
> Betcha not.
>

i'm definitely not a Roth completist (Operation Shylock was so great!
makes me want to be a completist), but is it fair to say that - though
already great - he was feeling his way in his earlier books -
particularly Portnoy and letting go (which I haven't finished yet, I'm
hooked though - I just didn't want to read about the abortion - if she
indeed got one, which I dreadfully think she will -- pretty
unavoidable given what I know about the plot so far - so I took it
back to the library for now)?

> From: Landseadel
>
> I read Goodbye Columbus and Portnoy's complaint years ago and it
> didn't take. it was much like trying to get involved with John
> Updike's work. Truth is that satire and surrealism pull me into books,
> the more O.T.T. the better. Joseph Heller & Kurt Vonnegut sank in
> early, Tom Robbins initially worked for me, but there was a palpable
> drop-off in inspiration as his career 'progressed.'

i dunno, for me, skinny legs and all, jitterbug perfume, half asleep
in frog pajamas, and fierce invalids rocked forty times harder than
cowgirls...he's no Pynchon but he hath a unique virtue nonetheless


> obsession in Pynchon's writing goes a step or two beyond any of my
> other literary interests. I suspect this has to do with all the
> overlap of time and place in CoL49 and Vineland with my personal
> experience. Perhaps not the most erudite or high-toned of reasons to
> be interested in an author but certainly authentic.
>

I guess his dionysian scenes are like the life I wish I had the
fortitude to live, and his apollonian scenes are thought out like I
wish I could think...is why I like him...that and the
characterizations which are maybe cubist rather than representational?
 but like the Picasso buncha weird shapes if you look at them right
something very definite emerges...


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