Rise from the ashes

[Mark Kohut]

I do not understand this one iota, smart and famous as Freman is. Which is to say, I think this is
just wrong....bad conceptualizing to say nothing true....
 
1) Why does he not mention Against the Day?...a book which tears into "whiteness"....which tries to show
the whole Modern World-System, perhaps, to allude to Wallerstein...people everywhere, a world everywhere...
As well as America...
 
2) And does "the Systems" novel mean anything but a (usually) large ambitious novel trying to encompass
America in its images and meanings. aren't there others (most of which i have not taken the time to read but...)
Moment in the Sun
The Instructions
The Children's Hospital
R. Powers' NBA winner in the aughts?
 
And other ones too? 
And shorter ones too, I'm sure.....
 
And, haven't there been some Latin American writers of ambitious Systems novels who wrote about dictators
much sooner---contemporaneously with?---than 30 years after their rule?
 
argjue with me......
 

From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2011 2:14 AM
Subject: Rise from the ashes

Rise from the ashes
John Freeman
September 10, 2011 .


The September 11 attacks spelt the end of the 'systems novel' and the
rise of a more diverse and meaningful literary landscape.

EUROPE may be the birthplace of the all-encompassing philosophers, the
men - and they were largely men - who attempted to stuff the whole
world into a theoretical system, but the US is where this urge found
root in storytelling. Or at least it was.

In every decade from the 1950s to the year 2000, the US produced a
novel that took a great deep breath and attempted to capture all the
systems of modern life at work: William Gaddis's The Recognitions
(1955), Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow
(1966 and 1973), Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985) and David Foster
Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996).

[...]

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/rise-from-the-ashes-20110909-1k1df.html
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