Saunders on TRP

[alice malice]

> Don't know 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.

I was searching for the right word to describe the author's tone but
couldn't quite find it. Now I know, of course, that one word (drivel)
could not do the job.

But it's so easy to take a shot at the author's tone. How he gets his
point across doesn't make what he has to say worthless. But what he
has to say is useless beceasue he's wrong.

Some time ago a discussion of _Rethinking Postmodernism(s): Charles S.
Peirce and the Pragmatist Negotiations of Thomas Pynchon, Toni
Morrison, and Jonathan Safran Foer_by Katrin Amian was bouncing around
on this list and off this list.

The author takes up the problem of creativity, control, power,
possession.  It's a very fine book and it's chapter on Pynchon's V. is
exceptional. The notion that Pynchon is a Buddhist or some such
nonsense, or that he is somehow aloof or beyond the western problems
his characters wrestle with, that he is an angel who wrestles with
angels and defeats them by some kind of Eastern conversion seems to
miss the point.

As Elvis sez, We're caught in a trap....
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l