IVIV (8): An Occasional Certified Zombie

[alice wellintown]

> My sense is that there is a quality of despair in the first three novels
> along with a backlog of Lit-Crit work in the seventies and eighties that
> tends to overvalue the "seriousness" of Pynchon. I find that complex
> critical analysis usually undercuts Pynchon's humor and tends to assign it
> to the category of—"oh wasn't that silly, now let's move on to something
> that's really important."

This is a total misreading of the critical history. There are several
book length studies of P's satire and humor. Hundreds of published
reviews, articles, journals, chapters, dissertations on P's humor and
his deliberate efforts at humor and how and why humor is essential to
his project. Robin, you are much better when you admit that you are
doing exactly what the rest of us do; that is, you need an ax to
grind, a rough surface to tread on. Nothing wrong with that. Look,
I've read nearly everything published about this author and everything
worth reading begins with a justification that points out how other
readings are flawed or inadequate or simply wrong. That this is how
scholars learn their trade should not surprise anyone half as smart as
you. It comes with the degrees. Is it a bad habit? Is it less than
collegiate? Is it sometimes abrasive and sharp-elbowed? Sure. It's
also a tradition that is worth keeping and it's fun. Kick the dirt on
the plate. Don't hit below the belt. It's all good.
>
> Death is easy, comedy is hard. Pynchon's writing is becoming more comic over
> time.

This doesn't makes sense.


> > Not every literary snipe hunt undertaken by every reader grows out of the
> design of the work.  Readers are far too clever for that to be true.

Amen!


> Don't forget crazy, there's plenty of Pynchonia I've read that makes zero
> attempt to communicate with the reader about Pynchon's writing.
> Alice/Terrance has a habit of whipping out an outlier opinion  then says
> something along the lines of "This proves that Gravity's Rainbow is not a
> postmodern work of fiction" when all it really proves is that there are
> outlier opinions that are out of skew with consensus reality and/or too
> clever for their own good. See "Postmodern Pooh" by Frederick Crews for more
> details.

Oh, come now. Pooh? I've been down that so long it looks like Tigger to me.


>
> > Someone posted a review or a blog entry or what not in which the author
> claimed that the amount of activity on the IV Wiki was evidence of the depth
> of the text.  I've no opinion on IV's depth, but the quantity of digital ink
> spilled over it is not evidence of such.  It testifies rather to the energy,
> inventiveness, and imagination of IV's readers.
> >
>
> Not to mention that more people have more access to the internet than ever
> before. A billion word processors, a billion monkeys—voilà, you've got
> Hamlet. Again.
>
> As regards the degree of depth within Inherent Vice; I say give it a few
> years before passing such judgements. It's only been out two months and lots
> of folks seem to be enjoying it right now. Some of those readers are
> discovering hidden depths in Inherent Vice even as I type, some are posting
> here at the P-list. Declarations that Inherent Vice is an abject failure
> demonstrate more about the critics making such comments than it does about
> the book itself.
>