Because Kai:

[Mark Kohut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Naïve_and_Sentimental_Poetry

Some, me, use Schiller's distinction here extrapolated to narrative works.
novels of ideas are on the 'self-reflective' end of the spectrum....

Others, say Tolstoy (excepting the reflections on history and great
men in W & P),
pure naive geniuses....




On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:57 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Those two cents worth lots more on THIS "open market".....
> I agree wholeheartedly with why such books attract scholarly
> attention....now, in their time......(see Ashbery too in poetry)...
>
> two minor points: M & D and AtD WERE hugely advanced (pre-pub orders
> taken) into all kinds of outlets...i bought one copy of ATD at
> a NEWSSTAND in Penn station.....and from a cardboard dump display in
> the front of a Chicago Borders (or B & N) as a house
> present the week it was out.....
>
> I bet they did make some mass merchandisers like Wal--Mart, Target,
> Costco (but I do not know fer sure) .......but distribution there is
> surely why there were so many returns...
>
> Read about the growth of Shakespeare's reputation sometime.....I keep
> wondering if Pynchon will be close to as widespread in public
> consciousness in 400 years time..........on a smaller scale it has
> always fascinated me to see a non-mass writer get more
> popular...sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once.....(ever read or
> read about the Joycean-inspired CALL IT SLEEP was published to acclaim
> and limited sales...then went OP until 'rediscovered' in the sixties
> and became canonical?...)
>
> Or of course, Melville in the US and world....50 copies of Moby Dick
> sold first year......HM died in neglect...then an early 1900s
> rediscovery that hasn't slowed much....he another 'novelist of
> ideas'''
>
> But there is the other strain....Chaucer, some think, a greater writer
> than shakespeare but......not really a writer of 'ideas', rich with
> voices (and their ideas) and conceptions, etc...as he is.......
> and Kai's mention of
> William Carlos Williams......and others...
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:37 AM, Peter M. Fitzpatrick
> <petopoet at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Here is my two cents.
>>
>>      I love to read Pynchon because of his absolute bravery and uninhibited
>> imagination. His "ideas" are never lifeless, neutral, or abstract, but
>> embodied, political, and provocative. He takes chances that remind me a
>> great deal of James Joyce in Finnegans Wake. I don't think Joyce was
>> particularly concerned with the hoi polloi or popularity and neither he or
>> Pynchon will EVER be found among the books sold in the big box stores like
>> Target, WalMart, Menards, etc. (this is an American phenomenon, where the
>> likes of Cussler, Grisham, Patterson, etc, are found in the far reaches of
>> almost every mass-market shelf space available, with one or two copies of
>> each author present, changing with each new release.)
>>       There is room for this kind of literature,of course, but there are
>> those of us who demand a more inventive and boundary-testing fare. Pynchon
>> does manage to ascend into pure lyrical poetry that almost demands aural
>> interpretation - I do enjoy listening to an audio version of "Against the
>> Day". Finnegans Wake is also best read aloud and listened to. These are
>> poetic voices and are suitable for analysis of their poetics.  Much like
>> Bakhtin devoted his life to analyzing the poetics of Dostoyevski, there will
>> be scholars devoted to studying both Joyce and Pynchon. Yes, some of this
>> smacks of the academic machinery that produces English department secondary
>> source reductions that misinterpret and misconstrue. But that is the nature
>> of interpretation. It is polyvalent and polyphonic (ala' Bakhtin) by rights.
>> There is a reason such books attract scholastic attention.
>>       They are ideas, voices, conceptions; "Weltanschauungs" in short.
>> Simultaneously political, historical, and philosophical, I think we
>> intuitively characterize them as novels of Ideas because they last longer
>> than the commercial ones, thereby resembling Plato's World of Forms, or
>> Ideals. Not quite eternal, no, but of more lasting value than say, a Janet
>> Evanovich # 55,  ( I have read one or two of hers, by the way.)
>>
>>    -Pete
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 4:49 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> If inclusion on course syllabuses is indicative of the respect teachers
>>> have for an author, than our man P is respected in the academy. His works
>>> are taught at all the tier one Colleges and highest ranked Universities in
>>> the US, at State Universities and Colleges,  to humanities and
>>> non-humanities students.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'm glad there are some out there who respect our guy.
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>>
>>>
>>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l