Pynchon/Hollander

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 2:10 PM
Subject: Pynchon/Hollander

> Of course, it is also possible that these themes find their way into 
> Pynchon's writings for simpler reasons:

 [reasons other than the type messages Hollander has decryted for us.]

>
> ". . . I just don't think you ought to be writing about me. The sad
> truth is that you're giving me much too much credit. My own
> research is nowhere near as deep or as conscientious as
> yours. It is, in fact, as shallow as I think I can get away with,
> because I don't write 'novels of ideas.' Plot and character come
> first, just like with most other folks's stuff, and the heavy thotz
> and capitalized references and shit are in there to advance
> action, set scenes, fill in characters and so forth, and the less of
> it I have to do, the better for me cause I'm lazy. . . .
>
> I would offer up that more likely than not, what ends up in Pynchon's 
> books has a lot more to do with the quotidian details of the author's 
> life than the author would ever want to have the public at large to  know. 
> And I suspect the man has good reasons for us not to know the  reasons or 
> details.

We don't know much about his ordinary life, do we?

He's very un-autobiographical in the novels. (with a few exceptions)

Of course you may still be right.

However right now I'm considering that the opposite might be more the case.

The thing I'm intrigued with at the moment is his insistence (in the passage 
quoted above) that the admittedly big ideas that pervade his novels serve 
not themselves, but as a milieu, as it were, for his characters to act out 
their lives and run free.  Just the thing he gets criticized  (justly or 
unjustly) for not doing by critics like James Wood for example.

Is it conceivable that Pynchon actually has trouble drawing from his own 
experiences or from the life around him for fictional material? So he 
searches the libraries of the world for all those bizarre ideas to put the 
people he wants to deeply care about  into sufficiently hysterical 
situations that they may react and become real fully developed characters?

A big leap I know but if we're really going to take Pynchon at his word we 
gotta consider it.

P.