Pynchon mention in Jean Paul article

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

> Have you read him at all? I am assuming Yes...

No, not really. When /Against the Day/ appeared, a local reviewer felt 
reminded of /Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch/,//and//after I had 
finished AtD (plus recovered from the hangover) I checked some context 
stuff including Jean Paul's novella. In its atmosphere and setting it 
did remind me of the Chums of Chance, but for some reason I wasn't 
thrilled and didn't finish.

> which ones might be worth trying first?
>

Perhaps you should have a look at the translations that are available 
online!

Here's /The Invisible Lodge /(orig./Die unsichtbare Loge/), Jean Paul's 
early novel from 1793:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=36353

More - English and German - Jean Paul online here:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Jean%20Paul%2C%201763-1825

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

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