Greatest Living Author?

Sun Mar 20 17:36:36 CDT 2011

Yes. Let's do AtD. I didn't reaaly participate in V. I was late.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Mar 20, 2011 6:13 PM
>To: James Kyllo <jkyllo at gmail.com>
>Cc: Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net>, Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>Subject: Re: Greatest Living Author?
>
>Let's all read it again and I bet we can find it....Smile
>
>I might, of course, be way wrong....THIS work may be the one in which Pynchon 
>lost his meaning-connectiveness
>and he couldn't make it cohere meaningfully but couldn't let go of any of 
>it...(and no editor can help anymore)
>
>Different opinons are one reason we talk, yes? Tolstoy thought Chekhov's plays 
>were almost "as bad as Shakespeare's"
>and he was NOT KIDDING......
>
>That genius hated Shakespeare and thought Chekhov was a short story writer of 
>genius but a lousy playwright....
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: James Kyllo <jkyllo at gmail.com>
>To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Cc: Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net>; Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>; Kai 
>Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>Sent: Sun, March 20, 2011 6:01:54 PM
>Subject: Re: Greatest Living Author?
>
>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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