Critical Thinking

[rich]

one of the things I wonder about is as you say re GR-- Pynchon
"historical facts which were hard to find in middle of the road
history book." One of Pynchon' shtick was the overly-detailed
authentic voice/fact/scenarios he dreams up. but now with the hyper
info drip feed/accessible 24/7, is this not as cool as it once was?
i'm trying to denote clearly why say AtD is missing the punch of
previous books. is it he culled all the facts and what came out was
not so interesting as before, or we're all encyclopedias now (that'll
be my banner slogan, ha!) so if you replicate an era precisely but you
lack a convincing story, it doesnt matter how well you write--it still
comes off as dull or all research. M&D had those characteristics also
but the underpinning story was just as good I thought.  In short, I
guess I still enjoy Pynchon for the language, the level of the
sentence like I noted before about DeLIllo but not so much anymore the
stories he's telling or the level of historical detail and research
that went into the book.

p.s. Kai I can appreciate that you argue with non-novelists. I wish I
had the stamina to read philosophy but I don't. guess as Coover says
we need stories or I need stories.

rich

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>> my favorite novelist
>
> Make that novelists: The slip - if telling at all - probably has to do with
> the fact that I reread Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) in early summer
> and - Hey man, the best book! - it simply rocked my mind. But Pynchon is
> definitely still on my list!
>
>
> On 18.09.2012 21:12, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
>
> Myself I don't have this that much with novels anymore. I argue in my mind
> with philosophers, social scientists, or mystics. Not with novelists, whose
> works I consider more to be like symphonies or poetry. To argue with Pynchon
> about, say, his take on the Balkans question in AtD does not appear to be
> fruitful to me. It's like argueing with Ezra Pound on Confucianism when you
> read The Cantos. Gravity's Rainbow way back was different insofar as it
> contains historical facts which were hard to find in middle of the road
> history books. Of course it still interests me what my favorite novelist
> think about this and that - like Thomas Mann's changing attitudes towards
> the West over the years -, but basically it's all about melody and rhythm.
>
> On 18.09.2012 15:41, rich wrote:
>
> something ive been mulling over in my mind recently--do you find
> yourself having conversations with the novels you read (and indirectly
> the novelist I suppose), I mean arguments, questions, confusions,
> anger at times, too. I wonder why despite feeling somewhat negative
> about Pynchon's last two books I continue to engage them. Far be it
> for me to want to be one of those guys or gals who harp ad nauseum
> about the things they obviously hate. I mean if you dont feel the need
> to argue with the writer you're reading, that must mean something.
> Pynchon has really annoyed me the last few yrs (much of which
> admittedly is not his fault--Ive changed, he hasn't or maybe he has
> who knows).  there seems to be some benefit for me to argue with him.
> guess i'll just continue on with that
>
> rich
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