Burroughs?

[Mark Kohut]

Speaking of Chandler, this is from a WSJ appreciation of Hammett:
"freakish knack for making neutrality interesting. Every object in a Hammett novel registers with unnerving clarity, even when it doesn't appear to signify anything at all—as in this aria to an office desk:
"Ragged gray flakes of cigarette-ash dotted the yellow top of the desk and the green blotter and the papers that were there. A buff-curtained window, eight or ten inches open, let in from the court a current of air faintly scented with ammonia. The ashes on the desk twitched and crawled in the current." "
 
Remind anyone of anyone else's desk in fiction?....[And, I'd have asked this writer were I his editor, is it real neutrality when ashes twitch and crawl?] 
 
And, since I feel pretentious enough this morning to see connections all over, I might argue that Pynchon's famous lists, such as Slothrop's desk, might be a 
fictional statement about "naturalism' in fiction now [then]. That is, it was just the residue of facts, the naked facts, and much, much more beyond naturalism was needed to present 
a vision in the later 20th Century (and beyond)...
 
There were a lot of writers and readers arguing that realism (not to mention naturalism, it's overdetermined relative) was passe.....Barth: Literature of
Exhaustion......Pynchon friend Barthelme in his work. (Don't know of any prose by him on literature)
 
 
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>; Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com> 
Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2012 9:01 AM
Subject: Re: Burroughs?


Since it is primary season, I vote for Toby Levy here....not qualified to judge Borroughs, even badly,
in my own estimation, since I stopped reading him, but besides the human vs. machine theme, I can
see nor have never read of any possible influence.........
 
I would bet that voracious reader TRP at least read Naked Lunch and at least started Soft Machine
'cause of the title, but........influence. He preferred Chandler (that joke is meant to imply he wanted 
story, always, difficult as his plots are........)
 
I think TRP might find Borroughs satirizable--part of modernism's failures---
 as he does 'modern' "experimental" artists in V. and AtD. 
 
Just offhand.

From: Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>
To: Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2012 7:22 AM
Subject: Re: Burroughs?


You read burroughs 50 years ago!  Somtimes it's the listener, and not the song, ya know, particularly when the listener has no more to say about the song than that they just didn't think it was very good.

AsB4,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Mu
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20



On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 6:50 AM, Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry, I just don't see Burroughs in this light, and I don't see how
>an assumption can be made that a young author was a "fan" simply
>because the older author was on the cover of Life magazine as being
>the new voice of the Beats.
>
>I read Burroughs back in the 60s and I just didn't think he wrote very well.
>
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>Date: Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 1:32 AM
>Subject: Re: Burroughs?
>To: Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>
>
>On what score? Burroughs was popular among the late beats, the
>beatniks, and the early hippies. Why, from this distance, would we
>assume that an aspiring young writer of considerable genius would not
>be influenced by someone perceived to be moving along the cutting edge
>of culture in his time?
>
>On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I just don't think Pynchon would be a fan of Burroughs.  I disagree
>> with your assessment of Burroughs' talents.
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 5:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: Burroughs?
>> To: Pynchon Liste <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>
>>
>> I have always assume that it was assumed, i.e. without reason other
>> than they're both excellent, cool, and experimental.
>>
>> AsB4,
>> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
>> Henry Mu
>> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:05 PM, Toby Levy <tobyglevy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> http://www.artlyst.com/articles/william-s-burroughs-explored-through-his-visual-art
>>>
>>> The above posting claims that Pynchon is a fan of Burroughs. I can't
>>> remember reading this before.  Where does this assertion come from?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Toby
>
>
>
>--
>"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>