TP on the shelves, not M&D

[Steven Koteff]

Pynchon runs neck and neck with DeLillo on bookstore shelves and university
syllabi in my experience (I'm 25, BA in English, last year of an MFA
program right now). Held at about the same level and in the same type of
esteem by most people I talk to.

Gass gets very little attention from anybody my age, unfortunately. Have
come across a short story or two in writing workshops, never seen a novel
assigned (*Omensetter's *is overlooked and does not ring of the
contemporary anymore in the way TRP/DD do; the bigger books like *The
Tunnel *aren't practical for college courses, I think, and it seems like
even the professors haven't really read most of those anyway; something to
be said for the snowballing effect of how widely read something is,
popularity necessitating reading, etc., especially since a great deal of
the reading people do has to do with status, both academic and social, so
on).

*CoL49 *is kind of the perfect book, syllabus-wise. Dense, very much of and
about a particular segment of modernity, resonant, unquestionably canonical
though not (by most undergrads) universally read, and, maybe most
importantly, short/digestible. Leaves room for other stuff on the syllabus.

Barth you'll see on the odd syllabus, Coover too though much, much less.
You'll probably see Richard Powers getting assigned more than those dudes,
unfortunately.

David Foster Wallace seems to be picking up steam and esteem in college
courses though has a ways to go to catch up to Pynchon and DeLillo. He's
really polarizing, though. Lots of academics seem to refuse to pay
attention. Franzen lagging behind a ways but still getting university
attention not least of all because he's not too hard for most undergrads to
understand, I think.

Gaddis doesn't get much attention aside from the occasional specific and
ambitious syllabus, I think. He is more known about than known, I think.
Though that's true of all these dudes to varying degrees.

Cormac McCarthy is kinda of but not about modernity, I guess (at least not
so explicitly), and seems to get assigned almost as often as Pynchon. But
again this may be more true on the artistic/writerly (as opposed to
academic) side of English departments.

Nabokov shows up a lot on these types of syllabi. *Lolita *and maybe more
so *Pale Fire*. Percy's *The Moviegoer *on occasion. Barthelme (you know
which one) more often than Percy but less than Nabokov by a long way.

Roth is of course all over the place though maybe suffers a bit (as some of
the others do) for having written so much, there being less a feeling of
one book being definitive (*American Pastoral *comes closest).

In terms of academic attention right now, at least according to what I've
seen, maybe:
Pynchon/DeLillo/Nabokov/McCarthy/Roth
Barth/elme
DFW
Others



On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 7:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Always some Pynchon, seldom the others. What i would also like to know,
> and have
> never tried to find out but might now, is are any BARTH, GASS OR
> COOVER generally on
> syllabi s CofL49 so often is? Maybe you know, Matthew?
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 6:35 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In Australia Pynchon doesn't seem to be very widely read but he's
> > certainly ahead of the pack in the way you mention, bookstore-wise.
> > I'd put his presence well ahead of Gass, Barthes and Coover (for any
> > of which I've had to waver divining rods around second-hand bookshops
> > near decent local universities for even the slightest chance of
> > reading).
> >
> > Generally Pynchon's books here have almost (but not equally) about the
> > same availability as those of Atwood, Nabokov, Borges, Morrison, Le
> > Guin, Rushdie, McEwan. The relatively recent Vintage reissues with the
> > crazy-busy-cartoon-pop-art-Bruegel covers flooded the stores and I
> > picked up a bunch of remainders to throw at friends. I expect the IV
> > movie edition will have the same storefrontage.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 10:19 PM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >>   Having just returned from the states I thought I would offer up my
> view on
> >> where TP stands in comparison to other writers from his cohort e.g. W.
> Gass,
> >> J, Barthes or R. Coover.
> >>
> >>   I was in Illinois over the holidays and when I could I went to
> bookstores,
> >> looking into a couple of used bookstores and 3 different Barnes & Noble
> >> locations from Southern Illinois to Chicago. Now, I know it's a small
> sample
> >> and hardly scientific but the conclusion was clear: TP is on the
> shelves and
> >> the others are not generally present. Whatsmore, I noticed that IV has
> come
> >> out in a movie paperback with Joaquin's face on the cover. It seems to
> me
> >> that he is very much out in front of the pack.
> >>
> >>    (In one B&N outside Champaign-Urbana, I saw Luc Herman and Steven
> >> Weisenburger's "GR, Domination and Freedom"! Not many TP scholars can
> that.)
> >>
> >>   It would be interesting to see if other folks noticed something
> similar, I
> >> expect there could be some regional differences. (Maybe more John
> Barthes in
> >> Marlyland stores?)
> >>
> >> ciao
> >> otis
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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