A S Byatt's agent

[Bekah]

Omg!    I read The Children's Book last month and yes,  for sure,  I  
saw the connection between AtD and Byatt.   I posted the following to  
another group - there are  5 different posts starting after I  
mentioned the similarity. (They know I'm a Pynchon fan):

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Sat Feb 13, 2010 1:20 pm
Also I keep comparing Byatt's work to Pynchon's Against the Day -  
there are many parallels.

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(someone politely asks "like what?")

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Sat Feb 13, 2010 3:19 pm

Well, first off there's the time-frame, TCB takes place between  
1894-1914(?) while ATD goes from 1893 some time after 1917. They both  
include scenes from a World's Fair (AtD opens in Chicago 1893 and TCB  
has Paris Expo.)

Both are very dense and highly allusive using historical names and  
ideas from that time setting. But where Pynchon used the sciences  
(from mining to the occult) as a backdrop, Byatt uses the arts, so the  
historical names and events are different (although Oscar Wilde does  
feature in both). Anarchists seem to be popular with both authors and  
there is a decided political edge to the narratives (Pynchon moreso -  
what with the Ludlow massacre and all). Pynchon and Byatt have both  
been accused of intellectual posturing.

The books are both doorstoppers with AtD's 1085 pages out-hefting  
TCB's 688. There are no internal stories about hot air balloons in  
Byatt, but there are caves and forests and missing shadows in her  
stories within the story. And there's not quite as much interesting  
sex in Byatt although it's certainly there. Still, I'm only half-way  
through and time will tell.

More - Both Pynchon and Byatt love creating characters and they do it  
over and over and over in these books. Pynchon goes for the really  
"telling" names (Scarsdale Vibe) while Byatt is a bit less dramatic  
(Olive Wellwood). I think there might be an equal number of characters  
in the books. (lol)

Imo, these character names could have come right out of a Pynchon  
novel - might as well name them "Rev. Cherrycoke."

Olive and Humphrey Wellwood
Seraphita and Benedict Fludd
Prosper Cain
Marian Oakeshott

There are also major differences between the books and authors - like  
Byatt focuses on the character development. It seems like she  
developed the characters through and through and then plopped them  
down in these settings to see how they'd react. Pynchon, otoh, seems  
to let the setting develop his characters - robber baron times need a  
robber baron bad guy - so they're a bit stereotyped or caricaturized  
or at least very flat. Pynchon focuses on conspiracies and uses some  
pretty heavy symbolism in his books - (the Church calendar, the sex in  
Spain at the time of the Ascension.) Byatt doesn't do that - she's  
developing some more changes in her characters.

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(other person doesn't really agree but he'll go along with me)

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Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:36 pm
Oh I know that on the surface they look really, really different -  
they have very different themes. (And I had a feeling you'd ask - I  
was almost baiting you - sorry.)

Byatt's theme in TCB has something to do with creativity and running  
away (escape, freedom - whatever - bear with me, I'm not done with  
it). Pynchon's main theme in AtD is revenge and big bad capitalism (I  
guess) - although Grace is a biggie. Byatt is terribly British -  
Pynchon is as American as apple pie. I may be the only reader to  
connect them.

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(someone else disagreed -  a true-blue Byatt fan)

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Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:16 pm
I'm getting ready to curl up with the Kindle and Byatt and realize  
that the differences between AtD and TCB are way, way more than the  
pitiful similarities I mentioned. Pynchon wrote an incredibly angry -  
funny satire with a redemptive ending - Byatt's work is serious biz  
all the way through. I'm rather partial to AtD but TCB is really  
excellent.


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(and when we got off on Umberto Eco and Foucault's Pendulum)

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Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:36 pm

The one I think of when I think of heavily researched novels is Thomas  
Pynchon and his Mason & Dixon and Against the Day - the thing is that  
Pynchon frequently gets the facts a bit off in order to keep the plot  
on his own track - I don't care in this case - he's too good for me to  
care about that.

I enjoy these excursions into esoterica and history if it doesn't get  
too digressive and labored. I enjoyed The Children's Book although  
toward the end there got to be a bit too much in the way of heavily  
researched historical connections. It felt like a history book  
sometimes. Byatt gets away from her plot and character development  
when she does this and sometimes she stays gone a long time. Eco  
didn't indulge in pages and pages of socio-historical digression and  
neither does Pynchon - rather they piece it in more tightly.

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Comments from the Pynchies?

Bekah



On Feb 27, 2010, at 2:04 AM, Toby Levy wrote:

> I stayed up late last night to finish AS Byatt's wonderful new book,  
> "The Children's Book."  The last two pages of the book are  
> "acknowledgements," and in the next to last paragraph she includes  
> this sentence: "My agent in the States, Melanie Jackson, has been  
> both wise about the novel, and precise about practical matters."
>
> This begs the question as to how much Pynchon and ATD influenced The  
> Children's Book.  Byatt's book bears more than a passing resemblence  
> to Pynchon's.
>
> I highly reccomend this book to all Pynchon fans.  Byatt is one heck  
> of a writer!
>
> Toby

Bekah
http://tinyurl.com/my-bloggish-thing

Bekah
http://tinyurl.com/my-bloggish-thing