Seven ways GR might have influenced THE SELLOUT, but, says the author, didn't

[rich]

sounds a bit more like something Robert Coover has done--the baroque
outrageousness  and deranged surrealism

rich

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 5:22 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I had an exchange with the Books Editor of The Guardian, a Ms. Claire
> Armistead, when she asked  for possible new questions to ask Paul Beatty as
> she had an interview coming up. I suggested asking about Pynchon's possible
> influence, esp GR, and sent her the shortlist below.
>
> She did ask him and he said he has never read him but also wrote "but he
> wears his reading lightly so can't be sure".
>
> I joked that it was almost Jungian (a name Beatty's narrator throws off
> almost wistfully a couple--three times ) and shows the depth of the
> "collective consciousness" of great "savage satirists" maybe.
>
> BTW, Beatty doesn't like his novel called "comic' or satiric he said in
> another interview because it keeps one from dealing with the serious
> themes. I'm at noticeable fault but I like this guy's vision.......
>
>
> Seven ways of No Influence:
> Lists: The riffs, the surprising, obliquely apt lists of comparisons he
> applies to various surreal situations.
>
> Baroque outrageousness.
>
> Slothrop's conditioning in Gravity's Rainbow. And the narrator's
>
> The Shit, Money and The Word as it is labelled in GR. "My bowels evacuated
> me". And his name is Me.
>
> Charisma is a character also in Pynchon.
>
> the trope of a 'lost community'--nowhere on a map.
>
> and most deeply, perhaps, the pervasive power and dominance--from the basic
> plot to other relationships....ala Gravity's Rainbow esp.
>
>
>
>
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