Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)

[Phillip Grayson]

I'll gladly grant that re: the Traverses.  Sorta, though Web is, I'd say,
possibly being wrong, presented as a hero, or at least as noble.  But the
Angel with the cricket ball grenades especially comes to mind, the mine
gnomes, the meteor brought to New York, so many other things, and, I think,
the general spirit of the book suggest a favoritism toward individuality,
that, sure, if it's called terrorism is kneejerkingly disavowed, but is
otherwise omnipresent and obvious, and not necessarily bad.

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 8:12 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm afraid I must comment......there is no avid fanship of terrorism in
> Against the Day. None. The book is, in fact, one of the longest worked-out
> family epics of the sins of the fathers, the fountainhead terrorist
> beginnings shown to lead to death down the generations. Violence, as well as
> other things, kills in Against the Day. Up close or over time.
>
>
> Adam Kirsch, good reader in general, the first to say this, was/is wrong in
> that review he had to write too hastily.
>
> The deepest themes of Against the Day align with the deep life-embracing
> ones in Gravity's Rainbow. We have explored them in depth here---some kind
> of Buddhism; some kind of panentheism if not pantheism; some kind of
> indwelling of the (non-transcendant) Spirit. As above, so below.
>
> IMHO.
>
>
> --- On Sat, 2/13/10, Phillip Grayson <phillip.grayson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Phillip Grayson <phillip.grayson at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)
> > To: "David Morris" <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> > Cc: "Richard Fiero" <rfiero at gmail.com>, "pynchon -l" <
> pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Date: Saturday, February 13, 2010, 7:52 PM
> > I'd agree that the "post" in
> > post-Cold War there might be a bit displaced.
> >
> > One thing that seemed especially good/hard to reconcile
> > about _Against the Day_ was the avid fanship of terrorism
> > displayed, a natural outgrowth of the individualism of early
> > P under the fighting oppression of reagan-bush-bush jr
> > America, a nixonian evil made strong by finally having
> > "rogues" and lone individuals without states in
> > particular to blame.  No longer a massive, Manichean
> > opposite like the USSR, but just idealistic dudes to blame
> > for everything.
> >
> >
> > However real it is (and I doubt it's as real as
> > purported, because the US can't be that hard to invade,
> > seems.  Seems people just like to vote Republican when
> > they're scared...) this new threat is a boon to
> > Monolithic government.
> >
> >
> > _AtD_'s anarchism seems a bit naive because it's
> > uncompromising, even as New York is destroyed.  It seems
> > unfocused because its focus is a bit far off.  It refuses
> > this new paranoia like GR did the old Cold War version.
> > (ie the Soviets are not the enemy, corporations are,
> > something now a truism)  (The men who would kill themselves
> > dynamically for their beliefs are not our enemies, it's
> > those who drive them to it, one way or the other)
> >
> >
> > The hegemony of monetary evil remains the persistent,
> > underlying, increasingly obfuscated enemy.
> >
> > There's a nice inverted parabola of this happening from
> > Depression to WWII to these days, one the man might have
> > imagined would hit ground before reaganomics, in 1973, but
> > which continues to plummet, and not alone.
> >
> >
> > Of course, actual politics have been Pynchon's
> > weakness, in my humble little opinion, because he's
> > prolly an idealist, but his sociology seems pretty spot on,
> > from CoL49's hippy predictions (or, "The Lost
> > Integration"s civil rights retrospectively
> > obviousnesses)  into astute observations about the motives
> > of racial hatred and... well, most other things in the big
> > books.
> >
> >
> > He is very funny, and the reclusiveness that so contributed
> > to his popularity might be lending a hand to those who find
> > him overrated these days, his first book was a masterpiece
> > so polychromatic that going beyond it was hard to imagine,
> > and the fact that his next two did so left him in a tough
> > place, so that even as he's done more, he's never
> > made an epochleaping leap like GR was (no one, I think, has
> > yet, since) though _Mason and Dixon_ was a solid try.
> >
> >
> > His rep might be punished for a minute now short term for
> > loving to write and for doing so increasingly often, but V.
> > Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason and Dixon, and (I
> > believe) Against the Day, will stand as the most impressive
> > post-war output of any author, none of the self-agrandizing
> > of Mailer (or, differently, of Updike), and none
> > (subjectively speaking) of the compulsion to publish, rather
> > than to write, that did in both those, and Roth, and most of
> > the Beats, too.  James McEllroy has a claim, artistically,
> > but can't connect as well, Coover is sharp, but
> > can't write as well, DeLillo has a way with words, but
> > seems to want to be a visual artist or performance artist
> > instead (and these shortcoming, I hasten to mention,
> > don't stop any of these guys from being spectacular, I
> > really truly like them all, but they aren't finally,
> > Pynchon) Wallace was great, but too crippled by success to
> > top his first masterpiece.  Others of his generation are
> > pretty meh, castrated by PCism or Creative Writing courses
> > or something, waiting for Juno Diaz and those younger than
> > him to step up.
> >
> >
> > Pynchon, in my opinion, was the greatest writer between
> > 1950 and 2000, in English and otherwise.  He can have his
> > detective larks, he can try to just have fun for all I care,
> > if that's how he blows off steam between paragraphs in
> > the big books and scrapes together some scratch.  I'll
> > read those before anything else.
> >
> >
> > Can't wait 'til his next novella, if only because
> > it foretells his next doorstopper...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 7:02 PM,
> > David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Post Cold War is apt, even though
> > GR preceded the end of the Cold War.
> >
> >  But many at that time saw the fallacy of the domino
> > theory and a
> >
> > Super-Other takeover as foundations for our national and
> > foreign
> >
> > policy.
> >
> >
> >
> > The MAD model has not completely been put to bed.
> >  Nuclear
> >
> > proliferation via terrorist-states as suppliers of enriched
> > juice for
> >
> > their own or others' use undercuts the threat of like
> > retribution.
> >
> > Some kind of international policing is required for any
> > real nuclear
> >
> > disarmament.
> >
> >
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > David Morris wrote:
> >
> > >>
> >
> > >> Knowing nothing about this Mark Lawson, I'd
> > only say that Pynchon
> >
> > >> might not really be in the category of
> > "post-WWII American literary
> >
> > >> giants."  I would think the term would apply
> > to authors coming to
> >
> > >> prominence in the close-term aftermath of that
> > event, and thus their
> >
> > >> identities having been intimately formed by that
> > event.  I would think
> >
> > >> that any post-modern author would not be in their
> > ranks.  Maybe
> >
> > >> Vietnam era (and post) American literary giants
> > would be more
> >
> > >> accurate.
> >
> > >>
> >
> > >> David Morris
> >
> > >
> >
> > > Post Cold War perhaps.
> >
> > > From "Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?"
> >
> > > "It [science fiction]was just as important as the
> > Beat movement going on at
> >
> > > the same time, certainly more important than
> > mainstream fiction, which with
> >
> > > only a few exceptions had been paralyzed by the
> > political climate of the
> >
> > > cold war and McCarthy years. Besides being a nearly
> > ideal synthesis of the
> >
> > > Two Cultures, science fiction also happens to have
> > been one of the principal
> >
> > > refuges, in our time, for those of Luddite
> > persuasion.
> >
> > >
> >
> > > By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any
> > piece of machinery, was
> >
> > > the real and major result of the Industrial Revolution
> > -- had been extended
> >
> > > to include the Manhattan Project, the German
> > long-range rocket program and
> >
> > > the death camps, such as Auschwitz. It has taken no
> > major gift of prophecy
> >
> > > to see how these three curves of development might
> > plausibly converge, and
> >
> > > before too long. Since Hiroshima, we have watched
> > nuclear weapons multiply
> >
> > > out of control, and delivery systems acquire, for
> > global purposes, unlimited
> >
> > > range and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance of a
> > holocaust running to
> >
> > > seven- and eight-figure body counts has become --
> > among those who,
> >
> > > particularly since 1980, have been guiding our
> > military policies --
> >
> > > conventional wisdom."
> >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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