Pynchon mention in Jean Paul article

[Markekohut]

Have you read him at all? I am assuming Yes...which ones might be worth trying first?

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 6, 2013, at 4:47 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

> 
> "Doch unermüdliche Jean-Paul-Enthusiasten, ihrerseits weidlich überfordert und genervt, geben nicht Ruhe und provozieren dauernd wieder mit der lustvollen These, dass Jean Paul poetisch-philosophisch mehr draufhabe als Dante, Goethe, Kant, Kafka und Pynchon und dass er vier Geistestypen, die sich eigentlich total ausschließen, in sich stimmig und höchstkarätig synthetisiert: Denker, Gefühlstyp, Satiriker, Mystiker." (Ulrich Holbein: Wir lieben ihn auch auf Bierdeckeln, FAZ, 3/6/13, p. 29)
> 
> Well, the referred claim of Jean Paul freaks that their author has more poetic and philosophical skills than "Dante, Goethe, Kant, Kafka und Pynchon" judges itself, but it nevertheless might make sense to read Jean Paul in a Pynchonian context. Myself I actually never did.
> 
> His novella Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch (Erzählung im 2. Anhangsbändchen zu Titan, 1801) about a balloonist can be considered as a forerunner of Against the Day. 
> 
> And the following characterization of Jean Paul's style from the Encyclopedia Americana of 1920 sounds familiar to us, no? 
> 
> "His style is perhaps one of the most barbarous and his books are quite without structure. His humor, however, is genuine, though frequently clumsy. He affected boldly to despise all literary proportion and technique and is recompensed by having the bulk of his work pronounced difficult or unreadable."
> 
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Encyclopedia_Americana_%281920%29/Richter,_Johann_Paul_Friedrich
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130306/90ed6d06/attachment.html>