TRTR: Heresy

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 06.06.2011 22:14, Jed Kelestron wrote:

> No Pynchon in his library:
>
> http://bit.ly/jFoAzU
>
>

Taking into account the sheer number of books and the fact that an huge 
number of anglo, french, german and other writers, both fiction and 
non-fiction (Cioran! Heidegger!), are on the list, one indeed has to ask 
why Pynchon is missing. Anxiety of influence? Might be so in the case of 
Proust (also missing), but hardly with Pynchon who published later. 
Perhaps it's similar to Roth, who - as I learned from an interview last 
year - does not read Pynchon but recognizes him on NYC streets. And 
didn't Pynchon too  somewhere speak of himself as a "professional 
non-reader"? Beyond a certain point artists can only learn from 
themselves, imo. During the trtr group-read the question re Pynchon 
asked again and again is: Did Pynchon read TR before writing V? From 
what I've seen in this group-read here (and I still read every mail), I 
really cannot say. But the resemblances do not appear to be that 
striking. And when we look at what Pynchon wrote in the SL-intro about 
US authors enabling him to find his place in the American literary 
field, the name Gaddis is significantly missing: "It was also the era of 
/Howl/, /Lolita/, /Tropic of Cancer/, and all of the excesses of law 
enforcement that such works provoked. (...) We were encouraged from many 
directions --- Kerouac and the Beat writers, the diction of Saul Bellow 
in /The Adventures of Augie March/, emerging voices like those of 
Herbert Gold and Philip Roth --- to see how at least two very distinct 
kinds of English could be allowed to coexist. Allowed! It was actually 
OK to write like this. Who knew? The effect was exciting, liberating, 
strongly positive. It was not a case of either/or, but an expansion of 
possibilities. (...) Against the undeniable power of tradition, we were 
attracted by such centrifugal lures as Norman Mailer's essay 'The White 
Negro', the wide availability of recorded jazz, and a book I still 
believe is one of the great American novels, /On the Road/, by Jack 
Kerouac. / A collateral effect, for me anyway, was that of Helen 
Waddell's /The Wandering Scholars, /reprinted in the early '50's. an 
account of the young poets of the Middle Ages who left the monasteries 
in large numbers and took to the roads to Europe, celebrating in song 
the wider range of life to be found outside their academic walls". Other 
artists like T.S. Eliot, Roadrunner, Frank Zappa,  Henry Adams and some 
more get also mentioned. But no William Gaddis, as far as my eyes can 
see ...

So perhaps this is all based on a misunderstanding? Shall say: Just 
because some P-lister are also Gaddis readers, this doesn't necessarily 
mean that there's an actual connection between the two writers. And if 
not, --- why are you people doing what you're doing?

KFL


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