aw. Re: Where did ...

[Paul Mackin]

On 9/24/2011 6:20 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
> On 23.09.2011 18:07, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
>> Not to necessarily claim precedence but I have long held that 
>> Bourdieu is the guy to go to when it comes to understanding why so 
>> few read Pynchon.
>>
>> No matter how assiduously one reads the long, erudite, 
>> many-times-obscure, works, it does not seem to increase one's status 
>> in society one iota.
>>
>> :-)
>
>
> Over here this was different. During the 1980s and early 1990s reading 
> Pynchon was an indicator of hipness. Among readers under the age of 50 
> it did increase your status. And if you were known as a Pynchon freak, 
> people joined you at parties, asking "Can you please tell me something 
> about that crazy American writer?" This effect slowly faded away 
> during the 1990s when authors like Vollmann and Wallace appeared on 
> the scene. At the turn of the century you could rather score with "The 
> Royal Family" or "Infinite Jest". Which perhaps has also to do with 
> the fact that "Mason & Dixon" is not exactly "Gravity's Rainbow". And 
> then "The Corrections" got published, leading to the effect that - 
> attractive to many people - literary culture is little more than easy 
> reading now. So malignD's dictum "You cannot criticize Joyce and claim 
> literary intelligence at the same time" is simply not understood anymore.
>
>
Yes, I'm sure my "experience" had to do with my demographic.  By the 
time GR came out I was already well into middle age.

In the sixties Pynchon had not really registered very much with the 
youth movement.  At least i don't remember it being so,  I was even 
already too old for that--over thirty.

Alas.

P
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