No novels from Roth anymore

Mon Nov 12 06:37:13 CST 2012

What Pynchon means to me? The triptych CoL49---GR---VL is my literary 
window into American culture of the 20th century. And his finest prose 
is as beautiful a Musik as the poems of Emily Dickinson. So I guess he 
means a lot to me, although I do not buy the t-shirts or the coffee 
brand. My attitudes towards AtD do constantly change, but it's 
definitely a daring novel of some significance. Yet IV? Not that I could 
have written it or that I didn't like the first read with you people 
during that hazy summer 2009. And to say that it brings new readers is 
certainly not completely wrong, though I know at least of one reader who 
was so turned off by IV that he'll probably never pick up a Pynchon 
novel again. But when we compare IV to VL (and that's the only fair 
comparison, imo), we cannot help but have to recognize the former one's 
flatness. VL takes place in 1984 and looks back to the 1960s, its 
characters build a three generational pattern: Through this the novel is 
able to unfold some complexity. In contrast to this, IV is 
one-dimensional: The immediate action is situated in 1969/70 (by this 
returning to the final pages of GR) and there are occasional flashbacks 
to the mid '60s. Not enough to open up a temporal contrast zone that 
would help to recognize the decade as such. Nor are the different 
generational perspectives worked out the way it is done in VL. And while 
Lew Basnight from AtD is to me one of Pynchon's  most excellent 
characters, Sportello - obviously a variation of Basnight - is basically 
a joke.  Unlike in the other books named (one may add M&D) here, I also 
do not find many sentences in IV that would make good poems when cut 
into lines. So perhaps it's better than the average crime novel, but as 
a work of Thomas Pynchon IV is imo a big disappointment. Some do 
disagree and that's OK. What puzzles me, however, is that these are in 
some cases the same people who - following their master's voice (see 
SL-intro)? - express the view that CoL49 is not a good book. How one can 
prefer IV to CoL49 remains an enigma to me. Well, we don't know what 
Pynchon thinks about it these days, but personally I doubt that he - 
like Roth obviously is in the case of Nemesis - would be content with IV 
as his final book. So let's just hope for more to come!

On 11.11.2012 15:10, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> 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?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>