Critical Thinking

[Keith Davis]

I enjoyed IV and I'll read it again sometime. Don't care if it's not
earthshaking like GR. I took it as a parody of detective fiction. Still
recognized P's voice. Still weird and funny.

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 2:22 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>wrote:

> "Contrast it with IV, where the style is P at his worst."
>
> Some examples?
>
> "There i nothing wrong with Larry's story, but the telling of it is poor."
>
> Some proof?
>
> The rest of your reasoning, Pynchon-wise, literature-wise, is sound, in my
> eyes.
>
>
>
> > 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
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
>



-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120919/f8900a73/attachment.html>