Critical Thinking

[bandwraith at aol.com]

I gotta think that the relationship of Hunter Pennhallow and Beppo, aka 
Dally, as it's portrayed in Venice- the artistic distance, the shared 
humanity and respect for individuality: i.e., cool concern- is at least 
a comment on, if not a reply to, Mann's Death in Venice. Not a put 
down, by any means- no indication of "Demian Metaphysics," etc., but an 
acknowledgement that art, and the art of fiction, have also evolved 
since then.


-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Sep 18, 2012 5:09 pm
Subject: Re: Critical Thinking



> 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.