I Love NY

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henry Musikar" <scuffling at gmail.com>
To: "Pynchon Liste" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 1:10 PM
Subject: RE: I Love NY


> Respectfully beg to differ slightly, Paul.  Military, drugs, founding
> fathers WASP family history, California, and Boston are all part of OBA's
> person history AND his horsed'oeuvres. No, not autobiographical or
> confessional, but Pynchon qua Pynchon is in all of his writings, at least
> his life until his move to NYC is.  Something Happened.
>
> Henry Mu


See what you're saying, Henry.

Didn't mean to imply that his subjects weren't deeply felt ones.  (haven't 
we all felt most of these things)

But, taking the more contrempory novels, P had no direct experience being a 
suburban housewife settling a will, an indolent caught in the legel system, 
an FBI agent or  informer,.a jazz musician, a movie production worker, a 
changer of a baby girl's diaper.

That's the kind of thing I meant

Roth knew directly what it was like to be a hyper intelligent Jewish kid in 
Newark and latter a lionized author.

P


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Mackin
> Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 12:38 PM
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Henry Musikar"
>
>> Pynchon may be from Glen Cove, and has lived in NYC for a while now, but
>> he's still a visitor from warmer climes.  Is this because of his
>> particularly WASP and peculiarly non-public experience?  His NY theater
>> section in ATD was through the eyes of a girl from the mid-west.  On the
>> other hand, Philip Roth who, though from across the river, apparently
>> loved
>> and courted New York, but left "the city" for greener fields, like me, 
>> but
>> still has always has been and will remain, like me, a New Yorker:
>>
>>
> http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/the-mayor-and-the-philip-roth-q
>> uote/
>> "The upheaval of New York had taken little more than a week. There is no
>> more worldly in-the-world place than New York, full of all those people 
>> on
>> their cellphones going to restaurants, having affairs, getting jobs,
>> reading
>> the news, being consumed with political emotion, and I'd thought to come
>> back in from where I'd been, to resume residence there reembodied, to 
>> take
>> on all the things I'd decided to relinquish - love, desire, quarrels,
>> professional conflict, the whole messy legacy of the past - and instead,
>> as
>> in a speeded-up old movie, I passed through for the briefest moment, only
>> to
>> pull out to come back here."
>> http://tinyurl.com/exit-ghost
>>
>> Is OBA's not having written a book set in the era in which it is written
>> because they take to long to write to ever be current, or perhaps due to
>> not
>> being fully engaged with the tumultuous surroundings of the city that he
>> has
>> chosen as his home?
>>
>
> Isn't it that he is not an autobiographical type writer as is Roth?
>
> Doesn't write about things he has experienced directly but  rather relies 
> on
>
> a lot of research.
>
> Some direct experience went into V.
>
> Probably less so in VL. He was already over 30 in 1968.
>
> By now of course he has lived in Manhattan long enough to longer be
> considered a tourist.
>
> Would stand in good stead for writing a pretty authentic novel about the
> life of an aging literary icon on the Upper East Side.l
>
> P
>
>> Henry Mu
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>>
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>