Pynchon & Roth thread

[Mark Kohut]

Paul writes:
I suspect that Wood's reservations about the character Blicero would be 
in the nature of what if anything he stands for.  He thinks P 
over-allegorizes into meaninglessness.

yes, and he thinks P undercharacterizes into vacuity...'all hat, no cowboy' to 
spin that line around a bit....

Re: over-allegorizing: he just hasn't sat and encountered him whole. 
"who said it should be easy?", said TRP.

In that letter i told him that if he got around to rereading Against the Day
and the others, as the similar critic Leavis did re Dickens, he would raise
pynchon to the canon as Leavis did Dickens late in his career...........




----- Original Message ----
From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 10:25:14 AM
Subject: Re: Pynchon & Roth thread

On 5/11/2011 9:38 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> P writes:
> I'm not sure sure I wouldn't quite enjoy a book full of Blicero.  He was a
> pretty marvelous creation.
>
>
> which focuses something quite perfectly, I think. The great (and yet greatly
> limited) reader, james wood--we
> call him a 'critic' said in his review of Against the Day that that book had 
no
> white whale and also that, whatever he was, Blicero was no Ahab and therefore
> NOT unforgettable (as a character, he meant, of course)
>
> In my letter I told him, among other things, that Blicero was
> unforgettable......
>

I suspect that Wood's reservations about the character Blicero would be 
in the nature of what if anything he stands for.  He thinks P 
over-allegorizes into meaninglessness.

Wood admires Pynchon's language pretty much without question.  (I think)

Wood seems to me  a very unstraightforward writer.  Very un-Roth-like.  
I often have to stop and ask myself what is he even saying.

P