Critical Thinking

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Interesting. I never realized this but think you're right. There's also 
a reference to The Magic Mountain which was first noticed here by Rich 
during the AtD-group-read: Reef and Yashmeen are introduced to each 
other by Kit in the Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta on the Swiss side of 
Lago Maggiore, and Yashmeen can certainly remind the reader on Clawdia 
Chauchat in more than one way. Her teasing ambivalent behavior in the 
first place. Both are also very emancipated women taken the standards of 
the time. Sexually and intellectually. (Clawdia Chauchat is not into 
higher math, but she talks the proletarian revolution with Naphta.) 
Right after this Pynchon makes the link more plausible by the séance 
scene which lets Reef experience the late Webb just like Hans Castorp 
experiences his late cousin Joachim Ziemßen in the last chapter - 
episode: "Fragwürdigstes" - of The Magic Mountain.  And about 150 pages 
later we find "Davos" and "magic" appearing in one and the same 
sentence. Guess that's enough to make a case (cf. Against the Day, pp. 
664-673, 815). The common macro theme of /Der Zauberberg/ and /Against 
the Day/ is of course the reconstruction of the ur-catastrophe WWI.

On 19.09.2012 17:13, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 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.
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