GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

[Ian Livingston]

My artist friends are routinely appalled by critical reviews of other
artists' work. They say critics just don't get it, that they write a
lot of high-sounding bullshit for each other that has little or
nothing to do with the work. I think the same applies to literary
critics. If we, as readers, talk among ourselves in search of a
language by which to grok a certain measure of someone's work, we do
more to honor the art and the artist than any high-profile critic can
do.

On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 11:41 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 1, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I have an inordinate fondness for 'reevaluations'.  I just LOVE when time shows
>> up
>> the trendy, shallower first readers.....
>
>  Reviews are always shallower, thinner, more reader response and
> promotional, or thumbs up or down. Re-reading is real reading. One can
> not, as Nabokov sez, read a work of literature, one can only re-read
> it. The issue I have with the review of VL is that it is shallower and
> thinner than the ones that were published the week the novel was set
> on book store shelves. A re-reading of a work of great depth should
> reflect on its depth and its more subtle ways of working out its
> themes and ideas. The Guardian re-read review advanced the idea that
> readers of a work may ignore the more arcane, difficult, odd or
> chalanging plots or strange digressions. This is bad advice. Why print
> it?
>>
>> Around the time I first read V., a long time ago,  I read a book called The
>> Failure of Criticism....showing
>> how often, with wonderful specific examples, many of the current best &
>> brightest readers
>> of their time ...missed it............start with Melville, a classic
>> example..........but so many missed so
>> many....
>>
>> I think Robin's right on here and I will add: they probably published it cause
>> he is a columnist
>> and wrote it...
>>
>> And, his 'political' beat and, as R. sez, his personal experience a bit later of
>> the people and
>> place, gave him his revised perspective...............
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Sent: Sun, August 1, 2010 11:30:20 AM
>> Subject: Re: GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'
>>
>> On Aug 1, 2010, at 7:04 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>
>>> Why would Guardian print this?
>>
>> They Liked it?
>>
>>> If it were a first reading of VL back
>>> when the book was issued it would still not merit a few lines in
>>> Guardian. What is the point of this?
>>
>>     "Zoyd is a typically cartoonish Pynchon character, equal parts
>>     Homer Simpson and the Dude in The Big Lebowski, but unlike
>>     previous Pynchon protagonists, there's a depth and a sadness
>>     to him."
>>
>> I think that's one of the points being made. Starting with Vineland, there's
>> more recognizable human behavior in TRP's novels.
>>
>>> . . . this reviewer can not even name the
>>> protagonist (Prairie not Zoyd)
>>
>> That is a matter of opinion. Of course, the fact that sometimes there really
>> aren't any protagonists in Pynchon's novels is very much the point.
>>
>>> and seems determined to save a great
>>> ignored and mis-read cult classic from the fate of the  Dude, the
>>> dusty bottom Blockbuster shelves, by dismissing half of the book.
>>
>> He's just saying that the book gets better on re-reading, which is most
>> certainly true.
>>
>> And this:
>>
>>     His earlier novels, V, The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's
>>     Rainbow, were packed with clever facts and
>>     speculations about secret power networks and
>>     European colonialism and the American military-
>>     industrial complex. Vineland marked a maturing. Instead
>>     of a precocious cynicism about politics, Pynchon, now
>>     53, expressed anguish about America's trajectory from
>>     Nixon to Reagan: "the Repression went on, growing
>>     wider, deeper, and less visible, regardless of the names
>>     in power."
>>
>>> Like, 9-11 was like a while ago and you should read Conrad's The
>>> secret Agent cause it's like a Hitchcock and stuff. Man, I mean, I'm
>>> the Dude, man, and like I finally finished re-reading VL and like,
>>> Guardian must be smokin the same shit as me cause like they are gonna
>>> print my shit, Man.
>>
>> Conversely, by virtue of living in and around places described in the novel
>> "Vineland", the author of this little essay tunes us onto low-level information
>> casually tossed about TRP's novels, affording a deeper reading of an apparently
>> shallow text.
>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 6:43 AM, Roy Cross <roycross at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/thomas-pynchon-vineland-rereading
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."