Book Review of Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon

[Paul Mackin]

On 8/24/2012 4:38 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> He was born in 1965, so if he's going to grow out of his contrarian 
> phase, he'd better get started soon.


He certainly knows how to stir things up on the p-list. We haven't had 
this much excitement around here since Jules left.

P



> LK
>
>     -----Original Message-----
>     From: Phillip Grayson
>
>
>     I don't know, I liked it a little.  I assume this is a youngish
>     kid, sorting out his aesthetics.  I think I did more or less the
>     same type of thing when I was 20-22, venting about Henry James and
>     Charles Dickens and other amazing writers that I was trying to get
>     around.  I was lucky enough that I still got the internet through
>     a phone line then and just wrote these rants to myself, but they
>     were prolly fairly similar.
>
>     Of course it's hilariously off-base, and he makes the mistake of
>     quoting TRP at length and then assuming that it's evidently bad
>     writing, when, well...
>
>     But I think smart kids have to go through this contrarian phase,
>     and it's good for them.  The fact that he can't support his
>     arguments and just falls back on rhetorical tics is something
>     he'll prolly/hopefully get over before too long.
>
>     Preferring Vonnegut to Pynchon isn't a necessarily terrible thing.
>      I could buy that, respect it.  He won't write about Vonnegut, of
>     course, but teenagers are better at being angry than anything else
>     (except I was good at basketball), so it makes sense to lay it out
>     like this.
>
>     It's a silly, shallow failure of a criticism, but this is
>     something we've prolly all done as readers.  It's not a bad first
>     effort at thinking about a serious book you didn't respond to.  I
>     knew this brilliant kid in college (who's now a very good lesser
>     known poet) who photo'd himself chopping Henry James books into
>     kindling.  Obviously neither of these are very sophisticated
>     criticisms, but I think it's good for young kids to get passionate
>     about these things; I'm not opposed to it all that much.
>
>     phllp
>

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