Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)

[Mark Kohut]

Even the reader/critics who exist via the template of James Wood's deep
but not broad lens of literature, loved Mason & Dixon for the characters, 
reflected
in their dialogue mostly...............

He did get better----again, imho, when it was what the fictional 
vision required---at character via dialogue
later in his career......




 


----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, August 27, 2010 8:36:45 PM
Subject: Re: Meet the New Boss (Pynchon's THEY or The Firm is Dead)

if you want great dialogue you've come to the wrong movie. Pynchon
doesn't excell at dialogue; that's just one of the reasond why certain
readers and critics complain about his characters and his use of
characterization; his characters don't look, talk, act, feel/think
like real people. So, if your looking for such charaters, read _A Fine
Balance_ by Mistry not _Midnight Children_ by Rushdie or _Moby-Dick_
by Melville or any novel by Pynchon. Pynchon's characters talk like
college professors, cartoons, mouthpieces, circus performers, Tube
addicted parodies of TV cops on speed and paranoia...etc., but not
like real people. Can P do a Pulp Fiction ironic depth with crazy song
and a car chase? Sure. Can he write like Mistry, like Stienbeck, like
Jane Austen? Hell no. Robin, you don't want me to get all pedantic on
your ass, but you don't know shit about literature. Your wasting your
time. maybe you should sut up.

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 4:51 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Realism (which includes any resemblance to "real" dialogue) never has
> been (ever) Pynchon's strength.  His strength has always been ideas,
> concepts, constructs.
>
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>>
>> Take all the exception you like, there's things I really love in Pynchon's 
>>writing that don't really start flourishing until Vineland, dialog in 
>>particular.
>>
>> "Self-criticism's an amazing technique, it shouldn't work but it does."
>