Critical Thinking

[alice wellintown]

What is a convincing story? And why is GR a convincing story while
AGTD is not? Going down toilets or up in pie in the sky balloons? Down
into sewers where saintly rats argue theology/economics? Is Oedipa's
story convincing? No. Pynchon doesn't write convincing.

Moreover, your characterization of P as one who replicates an event or
an historical period with anything approaching precision can not be
serious.

So,  I can not  follow your objection to AGTD. It seems to me that you
don't like the story he wrote. This, I think, it is fairly obvious,
and you will agree, if you think about, is your fault and not
Pynchon's.

Now, if you have an objection to how he wrote AGTD, that's another
matter. The style is absolutely Pynchon at his best. Contrast it with
IV, where the style is P at his worst.

There i nothing wrong with Larry's story, but the telling of it is poor.

AGTD is all that Pynchon does best; that his research tricks may not
seem as impressive because we too can look smart with research and
wiki & Co. is a silly argument. Do we read Hugo to read the passages
he ripped out of history books? Of Melville for the pages he lifted
from whaling books? No. So, we don't read P for his ability to take
marginalized history and stick it into his fictions; we read him for
his fiction making skill. And this, is all we need to see that P is a
better writer than most others we can pick up these days.

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 5:07 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>