No novels from Roth anymore

[Matthew Cissell]

Dear all,

 Let me clarify my response to Kai's post. When I asked "why" it was rather clear that Kai's aestetic evaluation was not positive, so telling me that "it sucks" is hardly helpful, Rich. I'm not interested in arguing aesthetics.

When Kai wrote "Wouldn't it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be his last book?", perhaps instead of "why" I should have asked 'a pity for whom'. Would it be a pity for TP? Why? Because it would not be fitting for the master builder to offer us a shack instead of the temple we long for? Does it lessen his former works or his own stature and worth? Is it a pity that Thomas Mann gave us The Black Swan shortly before his death instead of some great novel like The Magic Mountain?
Or is it a pity for US in which case I must also ask why. Do we have so much invested in TP's status that any percieved shortcoming on TP's part affects us as well?

It reminds of a professor who argued for Yeats as THE great poet of the 20th c. because his production was fantastic right to the last line, according to that professor. This seems to be what makes the mark of the Master Writer, consistently great writing to the end without turning soft or commercial or whatever. But doesn't this discourse have it's own history? 

The origin of my inquiry lies in the fact that I'm interested in looking at what Pynchon means to us, how we consume his texts and produce readings that then compete with other people's readings in order to gain some currency. Here on the list we see examples of people providing contending readings and how they gain traction. Consider the story of the little squares in GR that someone thought were film reel squares thus implying a cinemagraphic reading of the novel; the idea gained some ground but was eventually eroded by the truth of the editing history - a reading advances and then recedes.

In the end I don't care if Kai dislikes IV or if he thinks Arno Schmidt better or worse than writers from Gruppe 47; his statement simply makes me wonder about the value of TP's work in our lives.

Respectfully,
MC otis


________________________________
From: jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> 
Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, November 9, 2012 6:06 PM
Subject: Re: No novels from Roth anymore

It may suck for you. It drips for me.


2012/11/9 Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>:
>
> As the saying goes: Die Retourkutsche fährt nur von zwölf bis mittags.
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1208&msg=167246&sort=date
>
> And yes, IV sucks.
>
>
> On 09.11.2012 16:39, jochen stremmel wrote:
>>
>> Why does that (of all places: here) endlessly repeated reproach remind
>> me of Lichtenberg's aphorism about the book and the head that bang
>> together?
>>
>>
>> 2012/11/9 rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> cause it sucked?
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Why?
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>> Sent: Friday, November 9, 2012 1:19 PM
>>>> Subject: No novels from Roth anymore
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.lesinrocks.com/2012/10/07/livres/philip-roth-nemesis-sera-mon-dernier-livre-11310126/
>>>>
>>>> Philip Roth, now collaborating with his biographer, does not create
>>>> literary
>>>> art anymore. This makes me think whether Pynchon is still writing.
>>>> Wouldn't
>>>> it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be his last book?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>