pynchon mention in Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

[Bekah]

I've read both IV and Sweet Tooth.   On the surface Sweet Tooth is "about" the  MI5 Secret Service in Britain and how they hire a woman to "nurture" a budding author into writing pro-capitalist novels.  (heh)   It's set during the culture wars of the 1970s.  

The book is far more about lit theory than it is about end-game Cold War spies.  It's about reader response,  author is dead,  irony- parody  stuff and more, but I can't elaborate without serious spoilers.  

McEwan is excellent at pacing and tension building - I wish he'd go back to his pre-Amsterdam / Booker Prize days.   I did enjoy On Chesil Beach and Saturday but Black Dogs was his best, imo - and Sweet Tooth his worst (still worth reading though). 

Pynchon's doesn't use literary devices and concepts as themes as far as I know, although he certainly uses many.  His themes are more political with some entropy and paranoia and a sense of inter-connectedness.   Even IV had a political theme coupled with a certain paranoia. 

There's no real sense of paranoia or politics in Sweet Tooth in spite of the MI5/Cold War connection.  He's done better with that in prior novels -  (Black Dogs).  

Bekah




On Dec 16, 2012, at 1:21 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:

> On 12/16/2012 3:19 PM, Markekohut wrote:
>> I haven't read a word of this novel, nor even  a whole review--just headlines---but now you have me fascinated.....mcEwan doing a portrait of himself at his modal turn?....as you present it, somehow like inherent Vice in some thematic way?
> 
> Hope I'm not misleading.
> 
> P
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> On Dec 16, 2012, at 12:10 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 12/16/2012 7:19 AM, Markekohut wrote:
>>>> McEwan's early work, 70's, is much closer to TRP's than later. In this country, some of it appeared in the lauded New American Review.
>>> A young McEwan and his earlier work is obliquely alluded to in this latest novel.  The male lead in Sweet Tooth, Tom Haley, seems to be much like McEwan was, writes with that postmodern malaise of the post-sixties. Martin Amis also appears briefly in the book.  I'm only two-thirds through but kind of think the modal change the author has undergone may be part of the point of this novel.  But I must wait and see.  And also we don't want to lose sight of the fact that book also involves an MI5 caper.
>>> 
>>> P
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> I know of a lunch TRP was quietly at, w Faith Sale, that'd included an editor of that mag and another writer-editor ( of lit mag), Jerome Charyn.
>>>> 
>>>> Circumstantial evidence now suggests their friendship probably started around then, or earlier?
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>> 
>>>> On Dec 15, 2012, at 8:00 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> The novel is as much about books as it is about spy catching.  On p 224 we're in the London mansion of Tom Maschler of Jonathan Cape. Maschler is pummeling a promising young writer with questions and asks, did he realize that the elusive Pynchon had sat in that same chair the day before . . .  Time is early seventies.
>>>>> 
>>>>> P
>