Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)

[Mark Kohut]

I read the Angel w grenades and your other examples differently...........
what the world is, to oversimplify a lot.

And, I find a vision of a (lost) organic community as much as some room for
any individuality. 

--- 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: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Saturday, February 13, 2010, 8:18 PM
> 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."
> 
> >
> 
> > >
> 
> >
> 
> >
> 
> >
> 
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>