Critical Thinking

[jochen stremmel]

who tells you that he's trying to reach a wider audience???

He has fun writing Vineland and Inherent Vice - it's not heavy going
like V and Gravity's Rainbow. I'm not saying it's easy to write, mind
you! Easier to read, may be.



2012/9/19  <malignd at aol.com>:
> And this, if true and intentional, is depressing.  Are you applauding his
> desire to reach a wider audience?
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> Cc: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>; pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; rich
> <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wed, Sep 19, 2012 2:24 pm
> Subject: Re: Critical Thinking
>
> Seems to me Pynchon managed to appeal to a wider audience than ever with IV.
> I don't need him to appeal to the masses with kinder, gentler novels to
> read. I'm damned glad of all he's given me to argue with.
>
> On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 10:19 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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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> --
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
> the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason
> is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for
> the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the
> streets." -- Will Durant