Rise from the ashes

[Tom Beshear]

Three recent novels that might fall under the Systems category:
Witz by Joshua Cohen
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
Europe Central by William T. Vollmann (with the caveat that it isn't about America, but about Germany and Soviet Union in World War II, but it's "System"-like in its encompassing ambition.)
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Kohut 
  To: Dave Monroe ; pynchon -l 
  Cc: braden.andrews at gmail.com 
  Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:52 PM
  Subject: Re: Rise from the ashes


  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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