And NOWHERE is Pynchon mentioned!

[Mark Kohut]

WELL, MONTE!....yes, but I was indignant TRP was not cited. Either he
or DeLillo or Gass or Powers among living American 'novelists of
ideas" (of an age and noticeable body of work)?  Yes, there are some
young 'uns around too...but of the Americans who get nobel-shortlisted
(I know Powers does not)..are Oates, Roth, who else? among our
proclaimed best--or McCarthy or even Barth, novelists of 'ideas' like
these I mentioned? The latter are closer to 'few ideas but in (the
world of) things....aren't they? Hewing a vision out of the self's
observations and imaginative seeing rather than seeing from a heavily
erudite internalization of ideas?

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 3:19 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pynchon may well not loom as large among "writers the NY Times thinks of
> calling for a quick 'fiction today' thumbsucker" as he does among readers on
> the P-list. Shock horror! Neither Mishra nor Moser happened to cite him --
> but assuming I read them aright, I'm pretty sure they'd both say "oh yeah,
> novelist of ideas, most definitely." My answer to your first question is:
> Mark Kohut likes to stir things up with faux-indignant titles :-)
>
> That P's work keeps professors busy doesn't mean "he writes it *to* keep
> them busy," any more than "he writes it to foster the P-List." Same
> addiction either way: the writing (1) draws on many domains of knowledge and
> interest, and (2) keeps delivering bursts of additional meaning (and thus
> pleasure, for a certain kind of reader) as you trace those connections, see
> meta-connections across the various kinds of connections, usw.
>
> "Show-off-y".....? Jeez, once you accept the profession/avocation of "sit
> alone in a room long enough to produce 50,000 to 200,000 words about
> imagined people and events, then ask others to devote hours to reading those
> words from beginning to end," aren't the *degrees* of show-off-iness
> relatively minor?
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't want to deny any of what Monte and Mark say. Yet, in the two
>> discussions presented earlier in the thread Pynchon is ignored.  Does anyone
>> have an answer to this. If they don't think he writes novels of ideas and
>> his characters are flat and unloving, does this mean his work isn't to be
>> taken seriously? Is he writing campus novels, to keep assistant professors
>> busy? Or for our god-hungry youth, as Gore Vidal sez.  Also, I'm wondered if
>> he doesn't come across as too show-off-y. Please advise.
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 1:42 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Paul,
>>>
>>> Yes, P is so lyrical poets envy him. P is such a storyteller, he hooks
>>> readers before they fully 'get' it.
>>> But, as P said about "entropy', heavy-handed as symbolic rain can be.
>>> (and maybe--SPECULATIVE--why
>>> he disses The Crying of Lot 49?). But from GR on, he has so learned to
>>> take ideas into his bones and eyes,
>>> that he enriches scene after scene with multiple meanings as naturally
>>> as Ms. Dickinson used dashes and
>>> quick phrases. As Monte writes, and as I just did THIS is what I mean
>>> when I see him as a 'novelist of ideas".
>>> Look at how Mason & Dixon finds patterns....ideas about America barely
>>> changed between 18th Century and 20th
>>> Centuries; look at how math and physics and photography, ideas about
>>> and of, are so densely packed and laughed
>>> with--and sometimes at---in Against the Day...
>>> There's Weber, Adams, Weiner, Norman O. Brown and too many more to
>>> count infusing his vision and therefore every
>>> word on the page....
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > In the Times piece, Pankaj Mishra mostly follows Rahv's lead, defining
>>> > the
>>> > novel of ideas first by contrast to those "obsessed with private
>>> > experience." The novel of ideas should engage with "the pressures of
>>> > history
>>> > and politics on private experience"....it should take part in
>>> > literature's
>>> > "customary reckoning with the acute problems of the modern epoch."
>>> >
>>> > Moser goes farther back to a 1670 dictum: “'Novels . . . have love as
>>> > their
>>> > principal subject; they deal only incidentally with politics and war.'
>>> > Three
>>> > and a half centuries on, Huet’s observation mostly holds. Despite their
>>> > dazzling variety, most novels [i.e. those that are not novels of ideas]
>>> > are
>>> > still about relationships between people: about love."
>>> >
>>> > It's hard to deny that from "Under the Rose" and Stencil pere's journal
>>> > to
>>> > Maxine accepting that her boys have to face a changed Street on their
>>> > own,
>>> > "the pressures of history and politics on private experience" play a
>>> > much
>>> > larger role in Pynchon's work than in most American fiction since 1950.
>>> > And
>>> > part of the "flat characters" rap against Pynchon is surely that he
>>> > doesn't
>>> > foreground private experience and love as much as [or, when he does, in
>>> > the
>>> > way that] many other novelists do. Indeed, finding out that
>>> > historical/political agencies have brought about or crucially shaped
>>> > what
>>> > you thought was your love / private experience -- even the penis you
>>> > thought
>>> > was your own -- is  quintessential Pynchon.
>>> >
>>> > So unless "novel of ideas" is a shorthand, straw-man putdown --
>>> > "characters
>>> > sit around discussing the future of the proletariat or how to optimize
>>> > Walden Two [and no reader who isn't already engaged in that domain
>>> > cares]"
>>> > -- I don't see how the label doesn't fit Pynchon very well.
>>> >
>>> > On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> 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
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>>
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>
>>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l