No novels from Roth anymore

Mon Nov 12 10:36:47 CST 2012

What, can I just butt the fuck in here.  Rich you say that "the book feels
unnessearee".

What stupid planet are you on.  Come on man, this is Earth.  Who cares what
you fucking feel?

I'm just wondering here, what does Rich feel, you squizzard weirdo.  Are
you from this planet, or are you from the stars?

Let's all wake the fuck up.  For say five million years.  Yes?

We die later.  When you multipy seven quintillion times four plus two times
billion times multiplied by endless digitland.....there our souls seeks and
devour.

How long do I have to stay on this planet?  I love this fucking place.  I
was born here.  And before you lower creatures think I die apparently I
want to write you something.

Forgettaboutti.  Stupid mortals.

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 9:58 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pynchon got nostalgic in IV. an old guy remembering old times, old
> places. he gerry-rigged a story around these. when you're too close to
> the material well bad things are bound to happen. the book feels
> unnecessary. all of Pynchon's books had some sort of point; IV doesn't
> really. and the ones it claims to have, he had already covered in a
> more subtle and satisfying ways in previous works. but i've been
> yapping about this forever. thats the last I'll say
>
> rich
>
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Just want to remind, with full knowledge that all the reviewers, esp the
> second tier, could have drunk the same Kool-Aid, Inherent Vice was liked in
> general to the skies.
> >
> > Shakespeare also wrote Two Gentleman of Verona.
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > On Nov 12, 2012, at 7:37 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> 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?
> >>
> >>
>
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