the Merle center

[Michael Bailey]

 Mark Kohut  wrote:
>  I personally am loving all the recent posts, including the nay-sayers, in
> that light across the full range of plisters, which nay-sayers may have
> sparked the Return of the UnderExpressed

perhaps GR raised unrealistic expectations...it was never my favorite
among his works, so if anything I'm glad later books haven't been
similar...but I've gone on and on about that many a
time...nevertheless...

perhaps what one misses is the self one was when one read it back
then, and maybe the awards judges had an eensy-beensy point about
over-the-top vulgarity, and the richness of feeling in Vineland for
only one example is so much more overwhelming and beautiful and
thought-provoking and life-affirming...

- been swept away by GR myself often enough...but like the old joke
about the theatrical agent hearing a particularly outrageous show
proposal, "what do you do for an encore?" -- it's that kind of a
performance.

the thing I most miss from GR is the mad explicator, which I've gone
on and on about in the past too, but to maybe cogent-ize that a bit
more today -- one of the thrills was in being introduced to things
either completely new to me, or things you maybe had heard of,
scientific, sociological, linguistic, in a thrillingly discursive way
and having them embedded in the plot, but perhaps (on rereading) in a
self-parodying Mr Wizard sort of way too which has dropped out of the
later efforts, in the main.  I mean a sort of hilarity (so I'm verging
on James Woodsian "hysterical" but the difference is I think the
hilarity is deliberate and cultivated...) that is winsome and
contagious because it has a sturdy base in erudition.  Or at least
seems to - Pynchon himself deconstructs that any number of places, of
course - so that even though I really miss that ride, I also like what
it's evolved into - not so much like those elevators at the
rocket-place in GR where they cunningly make it seem like you're
dropping and then haul you up short just before you hit bottom...

...just tossing it out there, but maybe the thought excursions in
Vineland are more like a bungee-jump, M&D more like (what else) a sea
voyage, and AtD (of course) a balloon ride....

Within the discipline of IV, the explication is much more integrated
into Doc's consciousness, so that IV really does have a strong
protagonist, and a quite enjoyable one too - but yet again, a very
different book, a very different style...I would really like to see
some more along these lines!

gotta say, let a thousand flowers bloom, I don't mind saying the new
Brat Pack of Franzen, Lethem, Wallace et al has some quite decent
chops at times, but they have their own place and it'd be churlish for
them to expect to take Pynchon's.

A person of the new generation and those to come - unless some new way
of reading a lot faster evolves - is going to have a limited amount of
reading time, and new authors will need their support, a-and canon
change is inevitable. But, well, I believe there is a strong case for
maintaining Pynchon in the canon, and that his later books reward
effort at least as much as the earlier ones.  Personally I would also
like to revive the reputation of Ishmael Reed...while I'm on the
soapbox...am rereading Flight to Canada and that holds up quite well,
and in fact the new literary Brat Pack (ok, I will quit using that
appellation forever as of now...) might look to him for some
inspiration with profit.