And NOWHERE is Pynchon mentioned!

[Paul Mackin]

Describing the disorder and unpredictability at Meatball Mulligan's party
as increasing entropy in the system IS making use of an idea.  But does
this make "Entropy" a story of ideas? The author is merely using a
highfalutin idea to tell a story. He's not advocating or expressing
disapproval of disorder and unpredictability at a party. He doesn't want
to, and if he did he wouldn't need to, do it in disguise, via a short
story.

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 9:05 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> What's more, we bring to tales ideas of our own, like justice and cause
> and effect. So when Raskolnikov, though the poetic genius of Dostoevsky, is
> made sympathetic, our ideas clash with the poetry.
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 8:52 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Maybe I'm not applying the strict definition of "novel of ideas", as
>> subgenre, apparently, of the so-called philosophical novel.
>>
>> As a kid, I loved novels of ideas, and though I didn't ever appreciate,
>> Dostoevsky, _Crime and Punishment_, with the battle of ideas, philosophical
>> and religious, excited me.
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 8:38 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Are there novels, plays, poems...is there a literature without ideas? I
>>> don't want anything, other than money and beautiful men, thrown at me. But
>>> when it comes to tales I love yarn threaded through with ideas, allegorical
>>> figures and microcosms even. Take P's Entropy. Not a bad tale all in all. A
>>> youthful exploration in an idea story. So many of the so-called set-pieces
>>> in the novels are stories built on, from, and around ideas. I think it was
>>> Nabokov who admonished that weak readers love to see their own ideas
>>> dressed up in clever disguises.  Something like that. Call me weak. Ideas
>>> make me swoon, like raining men, I just can't get enough of them.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 12:21 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What's so great about a novel of ideas? Who wants to have a bunch of
>>>> ideas and ideals thrown at them, in a novel anyway? Do ideas make the world
>>>> go round? Well, maybe, but I can form my own ideas, at least for the
>>>> purpose of novel reading. Pynchon is a novelist of historical events,
>>>> invention and language.
>>>>
>>>> Or maybe not.
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/books/review/whatever-happened-to-the-novel-of-ideas.html?ref=review&_r=1
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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