And NOWHERE is Pynchon mentioned!

[Paul Mackin]

I'm glad there are some out there who respect our guy.

P

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Critic/reviewer Caroline Kellogg of the LA Times is a huge Pynchon
> fangirl. She even has the horn tattoo, I've read.
> As is--or was-- her boss there (which I learned from Twitter
> serendipitously and maybe that shared aesthetic appreciation helped
> her get hired).
>
> There is a guy who was at The Atlantic, maybe Alex Madrigal, who asked
> about other reviewers of TRP's later books online and I could steer
> him to that answer. he has quoted Pynchon bits.
>
> Michael Dirda at the Wash Post ALWAYS reviews him and each is as
> praiseful as this fanboy is.
>
> Of course, we all know of public intellectual Harold Bloom on a
> couple, BUT NONE after Mason & Dixon.
>
> PW reviewer of him and occasional Plister and writer, David Kipen.
>
> But there are other 'public intellectuals" worth gathering into an
> essay. Writers. And who I love best ever since I read a book---The
> Writer as Critic--that showed how often it was the famously best
> writers of a time who recognized the new sensibility geniuses of their
> time, not the most famous critics. (Interestingly, it is also true
> that it is often other best writers of a time, many who have lasted,
> who could NOT recognize the different geniuses of their time.) Jonson
> on Shakespeare maybe an early example of the former; Tolstoy on
> Chekhov as a great example of the latter.
>
> From Michael Chabon, perhaps the most interesting and Jonathan Lethem
> and Colin Whitehead and Coetze and Ian Rankin and others I cannot
> remember right now, there are so many writers who appreciate
> Pynchon.....
>
> TO THE RAMPARTS!
>
> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Yes, to the extent Pynchon's writing needs any defense on the p-list,
> Mark
> > is quickest to the Ramparts.  Not a full time job here, but is there
> anyone
> > out among the non-academic intelligentsia who serves in that capacity?
> > Admittedly I'm not an assiduous follower of such things. So maybe it's my
> > imagination, but it does seem like Pynchon gets "forgotten" quite often.
> Why
> > are his "brilliance" and "angelic language" and encyclopedic knowledge so
> > often an afterthought?   Do they just not like him or something? I fear
> it's
> > me, not them. What was it old King Lear say he feared?
> >
> > 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
> >>>> >>>>>>
> >>>> >>>>>>
> >>>> >>>>>
> >>>> >>>>
> >>>> >>>
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
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