Wiliam Gibson favored this

Sun Feb 21 20:08:16 CST 2016

In my opinion, GR is the penultimate. Nothing before or after meets it.

David Morris

On Sunday, February 21, 2016, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> While the formalist's approach has merit, sure, the prose, the style
> of later Pynchon is in many respects superior to GR. This is true of
> the late work of many a great author. So it aint just the style.
>
> Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion
> of "liking" a work of art or not liking it; the more improved
> criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test. I
> mention this to guard myself from the accusation of intimating that
> the idea, the subject, of a novel or a picture, does not matter. It
> matters, to my sense, in the highest degree, and if I might put up a
> prayer it would be that artists should select none but the richest.
>
> THE ART OF FICTION
> by Henry James
>
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 6:21 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > Every man is entitled to his own opinion, and every other man is
> entitled to
> > knock him down [not physically]
> > over it. -----Dr. Samuel Johnson..(and this is probably a paraphrase,
> > Jochen, who rightly likes quotes properly looked pup but I'm Tired)
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 5:34 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Mark,
> >>
> >> you are construing a "rather ugly dismissal" and a "he ain't shit"
> >> attitude. What I wanted to point out is that to call Eco an "absolute
> giant"
> >> is too much, even if he died the day before; as stylist he was no
> giant, and
> >> I have difficulties imagining that somebody reads his novels for the
> prose.
> >>
> >> So you would say the English translation is bad? The German seems quite
> >> good
> >>
> >> 2016-02-21 23:10 GMT+01:00 Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>:
> >>>
> >>> Thomas, believe me, you don't have to sell me on the uncanny brilliance
> >>> of Pynchon's prose. I myself have described reading Gravity's Rainbow
> as
> >>> being like imbibing some alien liquor, capable of pushing the receptive
> >>> reader to the edge of a near literal drunkenness. It's incredible. It's
> >>> amazing.
> >>>
> >>> But it ain't the only game in town.
> >>>
> >>> Foucault's Pendulum, for me, steeped since early adolescence in the
> >>> Continental tradition of occult obsession (of which the Anglo variety
> is but
> >>> a pale and paltry shadow), was an INCREDIBLY important novel. So much
> so
> >>> that I forced myself to read it in French, feeling that it would
> somehow be
> >>> closer to the Italian original. Having subsequently re-read it in
> English, I
> >>> would say that I made a wise choice.
> >>>
> >>> I'll probably try to explain myself more clearly in a future essay for
> >>> the P-list. As for now, however, I have a bunch of illustrations to
> churn
> >>> out, and I've been doing far more procrastinating than is advisable to
> >>> someone with my health and economic issues.
> >>>
> >>> Not trying to start any fights here, I just thought the rather ugly
> >>> dismissal of Eco on the occasion of his death was unseemly and
> distasteful.
> >>> I loved the man's work, both his fiction and non, and I can't fathom
> the
> >>> knee-jerk "he ain't shit" attitude that his demise was greeted with by
> some
> >>> here.
> >>>
> >>> And as for mocking the Sherlock Holmes stuff from Name of the Rose...
> >>> really? From fans of the guy who brought us the Learned English Dog,
> and
> >>> characters named Bigfoot and Mucho Maas? Come on, guys.
> >>>
> >>> Yours,
> >>> Jerky
> >>>
> >>> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:51 PM, Thomas Eckhardt
> >>> <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> You were probably responding to my comment, Mark, as I was the one
> >>>> suggesting to compare random paragraphs.
> >>>>
> >>>> The following is a little reductive, I know, but for the sake of the
> >>>> argument:
> >>>>
> >>>> For me, the ultimate test of one's worth as a writer lies in one's
> prose
> >>>> style. No matter how intrigued I am by subject matter, plot lines or
> the
> >>>> author's knowledge of science or her/his general erudition -- it is
> the
> >>>> style that counts. Everything else is secondary, even if it is
> interesting,
> >>>> suspenseful, important etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> "1984" may be the most important novel of the 20th century -- but it
> is
> >>>> not the best, not by a long shot.
> >>>>
> >>>> It is a common experience for most novices to GR to have no idea just
> >>>> what on earth is going on on the novel's first pages but to keep
> reading for
> >>>> the prose. Rick Moody put this best:
> >>>>
> >>>> "What accounts for the perpetual hold Gravity's Rainbow has on the
> >>>> consciousness of American writers and critics? What accounts for the
> myth
> >>>> that has sprung up around it -- a myth that seems to have ensnared
> even the
> >>>> facts of the author's life, or, at least, our idea of those facts?
> What
> >>>> makes GR so crucial to the voyage of younger American writers? I'd
> contend
> >>>> that it's Pynchon's style, not his subject. Whereas the prose in V.,
> Lot 49,
> >>>> and the early stories is occasionally inventive and arrestingly
> lyrical
> >>>> ("For it was now like walking among matrices of a great digital
> computer,
> >>>> the zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles
> right and
> >>>> left, ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets
> there
> >>>> would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth"), in GR it
> is
> >>>> more than dazzling -- it's uncanny. It discards the usual limits on
> English
> >>>> and American prose. In fact, the writing -- notwithstanding the
> physics and
> >>>> hard science in a novel often fascinated with the intricacies of
> ordnance
> >>>> technologies -- seems to me the point of GR, its motivating force,
> >>>> especially as this language elucidates Pynchon's febrile imagination.
> Take,
> >>>> for example, the stunning opening page, with its nightmarish
> evocation of
> >>>> the London Blitz.
> >>>>
> >>>>     'They have begun to move. They pass in line, out of the main
> >>>> station, out of downtown, and begin pushing into older and more
> desolate
> >>>> parts of the city. Is this the way out? Faces turn to the windows,
> but no
> >>>> one dares ask, not out loud. Rain comes down. No, this is not a
> >>>> disentanglement from, but a progressive /knotting into/ -- they go in
> under
> >>>> archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that only looked like
> loops of
> >>>> an underpass ... and it is poorer the deeper they go ... ruinous
> secret
> >>>> cities of poor, places /whose names he has never heard/.'"
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/07/surveyors-of-the-enlightenment/376912/
> >>>>
> >>>> True, in terms of "uncanny prose" VL, IV and BE are not on the same
> >>>> level as GR, but for me generally the above holds true for them as
> well. And
> >>>> Eco, as much as I may like him as a public intellectual or a
> semioticist or
> >>>> a literary theorist or a medievalist -- as a writer of fictions he is
> >>>> nowhere near the same ballpark.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Am 21.02.2016 um 12:55 schrieb Mark Thibodeau:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Just putting it out there that maybe, just maybe, comparing random
> >>>>> sample paragraphs from different authors' novels isn't the BEST way
> to
> >>>>> determine the relative value of each.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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