Does Pynchon Produce Only 'Masterworks'?

[Rich Clavey]

--- On Wed, 7/8/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Does Pynchon Produce Only 'Masterworks'?
> To: malignd at aol.com
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Wednesday, July 8, 2009, 5:16 PM
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:16 PM,
> <malignd at aol.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Statements like this always make me a little batty.
>  No other author could
> > have written GR because no other author is Pynchon.
>  But GR is not "far
> > beyond" War and Peace or Ulysses or In Search of Lost
> Time, or Moby Dick or
> > Pale Fire or 100 Years of Solitude or .... fill in as
> you see fit.
> >
> > We all love GR, but this sort of mindless idolatry is
> the bane of this list
> > (and makes me thing you haven't read very much).
> 
> Me, Pynchon 'n' Beckett ('n', uh, say, Jack Kirby) are my
> guys , and,
> yeah, likely Shakepeare and Joyve at LEAST ought to be up
> there with
> 'em for me, but ... but tehy're teh guys who make me ask,
> why do they
> do what they do in the first place?  They're the guys
> who make me read
> the critics, not to mention "simply" Look Things Up, 
> But Pynchon's
> fas are notably chattier--not to mention, generally, at
> least,
> friendlier--than most anyone else's I've encountered, so
> ...
> 
> ... so idolatry I haven't seen so much of here, unless I've
> been blind
> to my own ldolatrous, uh, ness, mea culpa, mea culpa ...
> 
> 
I admit to being somewhat in awe of Pynchon's writing. Of your list m, I have not read war and peace and the proust (though proust is slowing reaching the top of my reading list.) Of those you mentioned methinks only Ulysses compares to GR. Only my opinion. BTW I always meant to thank you, maligned, for turning me on to Alice Munro courtesy of this list. She is amazing. So...thanks!
Rich