GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

[Mark Kohut]

I see, said the blind reader......decent point.......I remember lots of 
shallower reviews but
i also remember the meme: "ain't no GR" [which I shared] and which blinded some 
from
talking about what it WAS, imo....

Yes, I guess I am just happy that a subtle -(enough) reevaluation made it to 
mainstream
meme streams.........slowly, more will read and deeper, 
better.........................

I hope. 



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, August 1, 2010 2:41:38 PM
Subject: Re: GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

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
>
>
>
>
>