TP and Nabakov doing SF that isn't

[alice wellintown]

And, we need to agree to something before we begin, so we might agree
that Pynchon writes novels, but then we would need to agree to what we
mean by "novels" and this would be a good place to start. Certainly P
writes what most, ooops, a lot of people, call novels.  Some of these
people are professional readers or scholars, and some of these are
experts in the novel. And, some of the experts have attempted, with
what some, including yours truly, consider great success, to explain
what kinds of novels, or we might say, have defended their own
readings of Pynchon's books by examining how they fit a particular
novel type. The best of these have leaned hard on the satire, and
specifically, on the Mennipiean Satire or Anatomy. But, of course,
these folks are working within a tradition and trying to figure out
how Pynchon fits into it and, at the same time, doesn't quite fit and
therefore is worthy of study. And, when we look at the tradition of MS
we do find common elements with Sci-Fiction and Cyber and Steam Punk
and so on...and, as noted, the encyclopedic character of the texts,
including the author's deliberate use of arcane and esoteric
errudition to overwhelm the dear and poor reader, and by this, forge
alliance between the reader and the poor scholar-author/narrator, an
alliance right down to the Anatomy of Melancholy, and to the Pale
Fires of the pallor sub-librarian of Moby-Dick and, for good measure,
our poor linguist S.D. Truck of GR (surely an allusion to Joyce and
poor Nora, whom EWllman tells us, taught a German? sea captain Latin?

The Wheelers named their daughter after a chapter in M-D. That
Prairie, a big allusive brow in American Literature, like the Sea
itself, when Dorothy is still ion Kansas, is a mighty book. What genre
would we put her in?

 Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there
is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every
being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a
passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty
languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face, in its
profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope
to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that
brow before you. Read if it you can.