Pynchon's back catalogue

[Robert Jackson]

> From: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye@[omitted]>
> To: <pynchon-l@[omitted]>
> Subject: RE: Pynchon's back catalogue
> Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:50:33 +0200
>
> V. was written before Pynchon really came
> of age as a writer, and in many ways he cut his teeth on that novel.  
> Later,
> I think he conceived what we could call his World Historical Project  
> - those
> three or four novels he mentioned in a letter to Candida Donadio in  
> 1964 or so -
> but V. was written before that idea materialized. I am of course  
> just guessing
> here, and of course V. shares traits with the Big Three, but for the  
> reasons
> stated in my original mail:
>
> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0810&msg=129436&sort=date
>
> - a setting around a world-historical cusp, huge scope, structural  
> similarities,
> density of scientific and historical references, etc. etc.

Dunno, the whole "cusps of history" thing is very explicit in V.,  
which I think gives the clue to P's research strategy and his literary  
method as well. I think that GR was one of the four novels envisioned  
in the Donadio letter, possibly M&D as well, but we also know that the  
"Japanese insurance adjustor" was one of them, and that ended up in VL.

The idea of a "World Historical Project" as you've set it out is a  
somewhat Eurocentric approach, one which I'd argue is anathema to  
Pynchon's historical sensibilities as evidenced in both GR and M&D.

> AtD, which
> conceptually, historically and thematically fits perfectly in the  
> gap between M&D and GR.

So do the Stencil sections of V., which was my point really.

cheers

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20090728/960708b1/attachment-0001.html>