Critical Thinking

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Yea. Pynchon 's a gas. He rocks. You can depend on him because there's
always so much there. Even what seem like throwaways often turn out to
be multi-layered and deep. He loves to make it look shallow or
superficial, and probably even better when critics- self-appointed or
otherwise- miss the beauty. But we don't miss the beauty. It can
make you shiVVVer sometimes, like a good...

Take 1/2-court, just for an example. Consider the scene where she's in
seminar with David Hilbert, the zeta function scene, where she's got
the floor and is attempting to explicate the inexplicable relationship
between the non-trivial real zeros and, and...herself? Halfcourt? And
Hilbert, very compassionately, like Skeletor, "Yes, my chlid?" Enough
to give me the screaming fantods. Hilbert, friend of the Jews, champion
of Cantor, collaborator of Einstein, and ultimately loser of the
foundation wars, but by then, between two real wars, too late to
change. His masterpiece left incomplete; just a few brush strokes from
completion- armored in rationality when Godel brought him low, the dust
from the fall, still not settled today, may have obscured the fact
that the masterpiece itself was a forgery- a damn good forgery- but a
forgery, nonetheless. Oh, modernity.

But this is all before her pairing with Reef, a real enough couple, but
"complexify" it, and somehow, by including the imaginary, they will
give birth to reality. There must be a complex conjugate couple out
there somewhere- to maintain the karmic balance- a complex arrangement
that produces no fruit. Our task, here, is to seek the roots of the
real- a reality that is somehow equally dependent on the imaginary and
the real.




-----Original Message-----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thu, Sep 20, 2012 7:33 pm
Subject: Re: Critical Thinking


And your good reason to be disappointed in the author is...? Stupid
names? Talking clocks and ducks? Boy adventure mixed with satire of
math and science? What? Doing what has been done better by someone
else? So Sotweed is better than M&D, for example.

I've nothing against your emotional response to Pynchon; although, you
are quite the hypocrit to condemn others for their unbridled and
uncritical passion for every word the man blows out his ass.

For your rejection of Pynchon is uncritical emotional criticism; you
expect him to write for you, to write in a manner you respect and
admire. This is not critical, but emotional reading. You don't like
Pynchon's humor because you want to be amused, but find his jokes
stupid. And, I'm not putting words in your mouth because I have read
what you have to say about Pynchon for over a decade and it has always
been much the same; he stumbles and steps on his own prose as he tries
to make us laugh or when he tries to impress us with his erudition or
whenever he writes in that hysterical prose style that lacks concrete
detals and descriptive language as it deflates, after blowing itself
up for no apparent reason, and then fails to say anyhting other than,
"Look at Me!"

Yes, this crap you culled from the reviews and critical bashings of
Pynchon's efforts have been your mantra here for a decade or more. You
fake intelligent, discrimination, and analytical interest, and when
called on it, you blame the author or someone else here who needs to
blow you or stop wasting your time. True appreciation of the art need
not be distinct from the popular love and appreciation of it; but this
is your grinding wheel; that some anti-popular ideas are in fact
cultish or fanboyish, or whatever....is obvious enough to an idiot who
reads here, but you make a living at it. What a fucking snob you are
MalignD. Blow yourself!
On 9/20/12, malignd at aol.com <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
> Please try to make your tiresome points without putting words in my
mouth.
> I've never compared him to Hemingway or Updike, of whom I'm not a
fan.  I've
> found Roth a far more vital and important writer over the last two
decades,
> but never suggested that Pynchon write like him.
>
>
> If you're fine with his tired tricks, fine.  I'm disappointed and
think I
> have good reason to be.
>
>
> The apparent weaknesses of P are actually preferences of particular
> readers. That he uses sophomoric humor, bathroom humor, stupid dog and
> duck tricks, nifty names and the like puts him in very goos companu
> with the best authors in the language, including, of course
> Shakespeare. Now some folks don't like William Shakespeare. they can
> not stand his sophomoric puns and is stupid names. Caliban? Nice one
> Bill. And, the Hamlet guy needs to grow up; he's at least thirty,
> still goes to college, uses sophomoric wit, usually some gross sexual
> insult all too much...and....
>
> Nothing wrong with talking horses (Swift) or pigs (Orwell) or
> furniture (Dickens) or ghosts (Shakespeare) or silly names or any of
> the other tropes P has made wonderful use of.
>
> To suggest that Pynchon write like Hemingway, and there are more
> Hemingway copy-catz than Boby Dylan wannabeez, is absurd. Pynchon, as
> I said before, ain't P. Roth. Or Updike. He makes them look like good
> writers not great creative artists.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, Sep 19, 2012 7:31 pm
> Subject: Re: Critical Thinking
>
>
> The apparent weaknesses of P are actually preferences of particular
> readers. That he uses sophomoric humor, bathroom humor, stupid dog and
> duck tricks, nifty names and the like puts him in very goos companu
> with the best authors in the language, including, of course
> Shakespeare. Now some folks don't like William Shakespeare. they can
> not stand his sophomoric puns and is stupid names. Caliban? Nice one
> Bill. And, the Hamlet guy needs to grow up; he's at least thirty,
> still goes to college, uses sophomoric wit, usually some gross sexual
> insult all too much...and....
>
> Nothing wrong with talking horses (Swift) or pigs (Orwell) or
> furniture (Dickens) or ghosts (Shakespeare) or silly names or any of
> the other tropes P has made wonderful use of.
>
> To suggest that Pynchon write like Hemingway, and there are more
> Hemingway copy-catz than Boby Dylan wannabeez, is absurd. Pynchon, as
> I said before, ain't P. Roth. Or Updike. He makes them look like good
> writers not great creative artists.
>
>
>