Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He's Always Been

[Monte Davis]

"Recluse is a code word generated by journalists." I had forgotten that
Pynchon remark from 1997, which IMHO says all that needs to be said. The
only other thing I might remember from this article is author J.K. Trotter's
own contribution: 

"[Bleeding] Edge arrives nearly seven years after Against the Day, a
sprawling historical fiction in which Pynchon barely conceals his contempt
for the city, described in the narration as the 'Cabinet of Ultimate
Illusion' and by one character as 'a nexus of known depravity.'...
Pynchon's New York is that of Fitzgerald and Salinger: suspicious,
excessive, and permanently corrupt." 

That becomes the article's peg by piquant contrast: as we know Pynchon hates
NYC, how odd that he lives there; recycle every "sighting" and NYC-related
factlet, yadda yadda. 

OK: We all know -- and routinely ignore -- the warnings against imputing
fictional narrators' or characters' views to the author. But doesn't this
seem egregious? I can't dive back into AtD at the moment, but I recall the
slaps at the city there as very much "of the time" -- i.e., that the Big Bad
City Full of Funky Immigrants, Tammany Bosses, Gang Shootouts on Mott Street
etc., where people from Colorado or the Midwest could easily go astray, was
a standard trope of turn-of-the-20th-century America. (Ditto for the
neo-noir LA of Inherent Vice.) They certainly didn't leave me with any sense
that TRP himself hates NYC, any more than that he likes travel by balloon,
or worries about the meteorites that space scientists gather from
Antarctica.  


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Dave Monroe
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 4:10 AM
To: pynchon -l
Subject: Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He's Always Been

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/06/thomas-pynchon-back-new
-york/66140/