The Writer As Social Butterfly

[Otto]

I’m not going to bash a real classic like "On the Road", but from a
literary point of view I would not compare it to "Gravity’s Rainbow".
And I don't think that Pynchon's characters and themes are
unnecessarily complex.

I loved "The Town and the City", "On The Road", "The Subterraneans",
"The Dharma Bums", "Maggie Cassidy", "Lonesome Traveller", "Desolation
Angels" and "Vanity of Duluoz" when I read them, but at a certain
point I came to the conclusion that for me (as a reader) it's not
enough to write (more or less) along your own biography forever. When
I got "Book of Dreams" later I tried to read it, but never finished
it.

2010/1/16 Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:
> The Writer As Social Butterfly
> By Andrew Boryga on Friday, January 15, 2010
>
> (...)
> If you need a more convincing reason to be a social writer, just look
> at On the Road, Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece: it was entirely based on
> real-life characters Kerouac encountered throughout his life, such as
> Neal Cassady­­, the basis for Dean Moriarty. It is a captivating book
> because it’s relevant, and more importantly, it’s relatable, and that
> is what good writing is all about.
>
> Contrast this with, say, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon,
> one of the most secluded authors in history, has not been photographed
> in years and rumors about his identity and location have been swirling
> since the ’60s.
>
> Gravity’s Rainbow—Pynchon’s magnum opus­­­­­ and National Book Award
> winner in 1974—drew acclaim for its transgressive nature. However, it
> was also criticized for its obscurity and deemed “unreadable, turgid,
> overwritten and obscene”. Pynchon himself admitted to his obscurity in
> a rare interview, saying, “I was so fucked up while I was writing
> it…that now I go back over some of those sequences and I can’t figure
> out what I could have meant.”
>
> I’m not going to bash a classic like Gravity’s Rainbow, but maybe if
> Pynchon got out a little more often and tried to better connect with
> other people, his characters and themes wouldn’t be so unnecessarily
> complex.
>
> http://www.litdrift.com/2010/01/15/writer-as-social-butterfly/
>