Greatest Living Author?

[James Kyllo]

I'd be very pleased to learn of a worthwhile purpose for the giant
vegetables digression

J

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 9:44 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We have barely plumbed, as a reading culture, Against the Day, at least the
> second great masterpiece of Mr, Pynchon.
>
> to those of you who say it is "too long' and needed cut or editing.....I ask
>
> What of his other books, except for patches, literally patches, that might not
> work and might have been cut or rewritten,
> would be improved by anything like editing? Some--V...might have been hurt by
> editing...
>
> HE puts everything he does in every chapter, every line, for a REASON...A huge
> exemplar of Schiller's
> writer of thought, a sentimentisch writer...
>
> I say if you think some are weak, they are so for reasons akin to critics like
> Wood: too much patterned
> reasoning, not enough characterization, which criticism/distinction I think is
> irrelevant..................
>
> We are nowhere near finding out the a majority of the meaning nexuses of Against
> the Day, I say....
>
> Or you can mostly throw out Inherent VIce, as alice and some do, or VIneland
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net>
> To: Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sun, March 20, 2011 2:27:11 PM
> Subject: Re: Greatest Living Author?
>
>
> M&D is fabulous and in my mind stands there with GR. Vineland and IV aren't as
> serious as the other books, but they are still very good novels, more so the
> former, in comparison to other novels that find their way into the bookstores.
> John Dugdale, of Allusive Parables of Power fame, regularly writes reviews for
> English papers, and he is in the habit of reviewing P's post-GR work negatively,
> but he is also in the habit of writing quite positive reviews of, for example,
> Stephen King, whose novels, regardless of how much King has improved as a writer
> since the 70s, are never as well-written as either Vineland or IV at the
> sentence level, something even King himself would, or should, admit, since until
> the last decade he insisted that story was all that really mattered:
> well-written sentences were always secondary, if that. I didn't come to P until
> 1990, reading CL49 and V before Vineland, but I get the feeling that those who
> came to P before Vineland have been hardwired to be disappointed. A&D is long,
> and perhaps editing would have helped this now harried reader, to devote the
> time it deserves but that's my problem, not Ps, and the sentences are as
> extraordinary as one is likely to find in a novel of the last decade.
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>>>Sent: Mar 20, 2011 10:47 AM
>>>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>Subject: Greatest Living Author?
>>>
>>>
>>>Laura Kelber uttered on TRP:
>>>
>>> > Greatest Living Author
>>>
>>>
>>>Still think that Gravity's Rainbow belongs - together with
>>>Slaughterhouse 5, Ubik, Blood Meridian, The Runaway Soul and Infinite
>>>Jest - to the best American novels in the 20th century's second half,
>>>but everything since Vineland (nice personal epilogue, though) reads,
>>>though still full of interesting ideas, not so well in terms of serious
>>>literature. Not that I could have written it, mind you! It's just that I
>>>recently re-read IV in translation and then re-re-read it in original,
>>>thinking: My goodness! What a flat book. The Bill Millard essay (thanks
>>>again!) is great, true, but it is - let's face it! - more about
>>>architecture, urban space and land development in general, picking up IV
>>>pieces for reasons of illustration. Millard is not interested in
>>>Pynchon's style and he openly admits to find the plot irrelevant.
>>>Inherent Vice doesn't reveal much on second and third read; actually it
>>>begs for the Hollywood movie adaption. Also was able to finish - Uff! -
>>>my regular first-to-last-page read of Against the Day. Hhmm ... The
>>>Ostende parts (still think that they stem from an early draft written by
>>>the time of GR) are kinda good, and Cyprian is an interesting character.
>>>But the book is far far too long, and I certainly won't repeat my M&D
>>>mistake to read it a third time. Regarding those Iceland parts I may say
>>>that - although I'd be the first person to welcome a
>>>straight-into-the-face HPL parody of, say, 12 or 15 pages - no author,
>>>dead or alive, should try to compete with Lovecrafts's "At the Mountains
>>>of Madness". It's - perhaps together with "The Colour Out of Space" -
>>>his most brilliant text, and Pynchon's parody is rather lame. However,
>>>CoL 49 is a nice novella announcing the Rainbow, and very few authors in
>>>their mid twenties managed to bring out a debut novel like V. The King
>>>is dead, long live the King!
>>>
>>>KFL
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>



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