Critical Thinking

[Paul Mackin]

On 9/19/2012 3:51 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> But the joy, or whatever it is that novelists experience when they
> produce a wonder, a work of art, a child that is worthy...
>
> And surely, even for Pynchon, who, we can only assume,  has little of
> the pain, the suffering, the poverty, of poets,
>
> and, who knows....but ... I am reminded of Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee
> Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company, and the prelude about the wife
> of the poet, how she stands by her author, and how he, while
> constructing an ambitious, ourageous, maganificent work of art, is
> comforted by her...
>
> and, who knows but what compromises may be made in marraiges that are
> also business arrangements
>
> and, who knows, but when the business involved art....
>
> well, who knows if Pynchon even read The Recognitions or not, but
>
> he did the retro-marketing beach novel deal.
>
> He will make what he wants.
>
> And, if he does not, well, who wants what he makes but those who would
> make him a forger and a fake.
>
> An artist, a great artist like Pynchon does not need us to tell him
> how to tone it up or tone it down. The command he has of tone is rare;
> his ability to parody, to play off conventions and reader
> expectations, wonderful. To give us a GR part II would weaken both
> efforts.
>
> Why would Pynchon write in an easy style? WQhy woud we want him to?
> Should Faulkner come back from the dead would we hope hemight write an
> easy-listening novel?
>
I would guess he pretty well can't change the kind of writer he is. It 
wouldn't be him.   We better just accept it.

P