Kathryn Hume's other Pynchon stuff

[Monte Davis]

Everything in that sentence walks a tightrope over deepest Meet Me in St.
Louis kitsch, or maybe kirsch, laced with essence of Spoon River Winesburg
Big-Hearted Giants in the Earth nostalgia. (Not what's in them, but what
Cliff's Notes thinks is in them). It's a hairsbreadth away from the "finer
passages" marked with 1, 2, or 3 Baedekerian stars in Cold Comfort Farm.

I mean -- streetcars and intercity trolleys? train whistles across the
plains? riverside saloons? slinging hash? the girls they left behind?
Bluebirds nesting in the fenceposts? Give me a fucking break.

And yet the music of it, the framing within Dally's memories of childhood,
the land-for-sea switcheroo Pynchon has used over and over and perfected in
M&D... they redeem every near-cliché, they make it as new as Ezra could ask,
they make it heartbreaking.

(And Bled, just in case you're serious: I couldn't care less whether
"Pynchon knows nothing of the Midwest." He's *made* a Midwest out of little
black marks on paper.   Try it some time -- it's harder than it looks.)    

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Rich
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 10:38 AM
To: Monte Davis
Cc: David Morris; pynchon -l
Subject: Re: Kathryn Hume's other Pynchon stuff

If I remember correctly even James wood liked that passage and quoted it in
his review. It is wonderful. 



On Sep 12, 2012, at 10:27 AM, "Monte Davis" <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> Less likely, I agree. But oh, when he does (AtD p. 71):
> 
> "They pushed out into morning fields that went rolling all the way to 
> every horizon, the Inner American Sea, where the chickens schooled 
> like herring, and the hogs and heifers foraged and browsed like 
> groupers and codfish, and the sharks tended to operate out of Chicago 
> or Kansas City-the farm-houses and towns rising up along the journey 
> like islands, with girls in every one, Merle couldn't help but notice, 
> the extravagantly kept promises of island girls, found riding the 
> electric trolley-lines that linked each cozy city to each, or serenely 
> dealing cards in the riverside saloons, slinging hash in cafeterias 
> you walked downstairs into out of the redbrick streets, gazing through 
> doorscreens in Cedar Rapids, girls at fences in front of long fields 
> in yellow light, Lizas and Chastinas, girls of the plains and of 
> profusely-flowered seasons that may never quite have been, cooking for 
> threshers far into and sometimes all through the nights of harvest, 
> watching the streetcars come and go, dreaming of cavalry boys ridden 
> off down the pikes, sipping the local brain tonic, tending steaming 
> wash tubs full of corn ears at the street corners with radiant eyes 
> ever on the move, out in the yard in Ottumwa beating a rug, waiting in 
> the mosquito-thick evenings of downstate Illinois, waiting by the 
> fencepost where the bluebirds were nesting for a footloose brother to come
back home after all, looking out a window in Albert Lea as the trains went
choiring by."
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On 
> Behalf Of David Morris
> Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:35 AM
> To: alice wellintown
> Cc: pynchon -l
> Subject: Re: Kathryn Hume's other Pynchon stuff
> 
> I believe you re mostly correct in these statements.  Pynchon can 
> still write beautiful and elaborate prose (but I think he's less 
> likely to make page-length sentences as in GR).  But I got the 
> distinct feeling in AtD that it was in the service of not much.  It 
> almost felt at times that he was imitating himself or following a formula.
> 
> David Morris
> 
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 5:11 AM, alice wellintown 
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> So, I suspect that it is not the prose style, surely superior in the 
>> elder P of AGTD, that turns GR-Fanboys off. It is other things, like 
>> characters and themes and settings and, dare I say, plots. But it is 
>> not the style, not the words and sentences and imagery and the craft.
>> No way! AGTD is superior hand at work. No serious reader or writer 
>> can deny that.
>