Saunders on TRP

[bandwraith at aol.com]

No, it's not drivel, but it fails beyond giving heart to lovers of 
Pynchon.
Calling it drivel, however, belies a greater sin- the need to be Right.
Being right does not work well with appreciation of the post-post
modernists, despite the reality that Pynchon is the American Epitome.

The goal, if I may, is not to be right, but to be interrresting, as Chad
Mason might intonate. Clearly, after Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Sarajevo,
911, yada, etc,,yada, there simply is no such global reality as "Right."

For example (of why Saunders lurches into fan-boyism), ATD is way
more realistic w/r/t current consciousness then the already dated
Bleeding Edge, and just because Bleeding Edge TRIES to be dated.
And yet, ATD is "set" about 100 years afore. How does Saunders
explain that? Mimesis has never been Pynchon's object, and yet it
is.

What?  It's a mimesis of whole different kind- one that invalidates
as it pays homage to- the passage of time.



-----Original Message-----
From: malignd <malignd at aol.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, Mar 26, 2014 5:52 pm
Subject: Re: Saunders on TRP


Don't  that I'd call it drivel, but there's a gushiness about it; an 
off-putting, fawning quality; a suspension of anything critical that is 
like a eulogy or an intro to his receiving a lifetime achievement award.



-----Original Message-----
From: alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tue, Mar 25, 2014 7:07 pm
Subject: Re: Saunders on TRP


And you posted this drivel because ....? 

On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:


Just ran across it again, Bookforum 2005:


George Saunders I don't think anyone has gotten closer than Thomas 
Pynchon to summoning the real audacity and insanity and scope of the 
American mind, as reflected in the American landscape. I read Pynchon 
all out of order, starting with Vineland, and I still remember the 
shock of pleasure I got at finally seeing the America I knew—strange 
shops and boulevards, built over former strange shops and former 
boulevards, all laid out there in valleys and dead-end forests, heaped 
on top of Indian cemeteries, peopled with nut jobs and hustlers and 
moral purists—actually present in a novel, and present not only in 
substance but in structure and language that both used and evoked the 
unruly, muscular complexity of the world itself.


In Pynchon, anything is fair game—if it is in the world, it can go in 
the book. To me there is something Buddhist about this approach, which 
seems to say that since the world is capable of producing an infinity 
of forms, the novel must be capable of accommodating an infinite number 
of forms. All aesthetic concerns (style, form, structure) answer this 
purpose: Let in the world.

This is why Pynchon is our biggest writer, the gold standard of that 
overused word inclusiveness: No dogma or tidy aesthetic rule or 
literary fashion is allowed to prefilter the beautiful data streaming 
in. Everything is included. No inclination of the mind is too small or 
large or frightening. The result is gorgeous madness, which does what 
great literature has always done—reminds us that there is a world out 
there that is bigger than us and worthy of our utmost humility and 
attention.

I have often felt that we read to gain some idea of what God would say 
about us if someone were to ask Him what we're like. Pynchon says, 
through the vast loving catalogue he has made, that we are Excellent 
but need to be watched closely. He says there is no higher form of 
worship than the loving (i.e., madly attentive) observation of 
that-which-is, a form of prayer of which Pynchon's work is our highest 
example.



http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_05/pynchon.html




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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l