On Tommy Pynchon. Daily Beast Interview with Harold Bloom re his new book.
matthew cissell
mccissell at gmail.com
Wed May 27 03:48:56 CDT 2015
A battle of the anglo critics. How so? Well you see, James Wood
put out his book (The Nearest Thing to Life) last April. Apparently it
is more recycled lectures (from a series of lectures given at Brandies
and the British Museum) and some memoir all in less than 150 pgs. It
might be interesting to see how they fair in terms of book sales, or
over the longer term inclusion into course syllabi.
And this from a friendly review: His standing as a foreigner leads to
a lovely meditation on what Wood refers to as “homelooseness:” “Exile
is acute, massive, transformative; but homelooseness, because it moves
along its axis of departure and return, can be banal, welcome,
necessary, continuous.”
Homelooseness. That's his new term. Get it? Isn't that witty.
Word play involving a socially and economically disadvantaged group of
people.
At least in this present book there don't appear to be any jabs at
the Hysterical Realism group also known as HR bloc.
ciao
mc otis
p.s. Wouldn't it be grand to hear a conversation between Harold Bloom
and James Wood regarding Pynchon's work, especially M&D since they
have such different views about the novel.
On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> What American novelists in our time do you think will survive?
>
> I would not include Saul Bellow, who I didn’t like as a person or as a
> writer. It would be Philip Roth and Sabbath’s Theatre and American
> Pastoral, Don Delillo for Underworld, Cormac McCarthy for Blood
> Meridian, Tommy Pynchon for three books anyway, the early and
> magnificent The Crying of Lot 49, and then certain moments scattered
> through Gravity’s Rainbow, and then Mason & Dixon,which is quite a
> formidable book.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list