P in Uni syllabi (not P on)

[Mark Kohut]

Too ambitious for me to help with.
So, I'll just bloviate.
A; Yes, P will grow while Barth fades. Where's Delillo? Wallace? Others?
I do remember how Kesey's SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION was THE Kesey
getting more bought at and since his death.
That one might last (in a footnote way)
Roth will be the Hawthorne to P's Melville of our time, to bloviate
contentiously.


On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 6:53 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Happy festive days passed to you all - Hail Sol Invictus!
>
> Does anyone know of a source (webpage, whateva) for cross referencing
> University syllabi? I've poked around, but, ya'know, needle, haystack - to
> the nth. I have come across numerous individual examples: not what I'm
> lookin for.
>
> Some time back someone posted that TP's works were listed in all tier 4 (if
> I recall correctly) universities, which made me think it didn't refer to the
> US uni system.
>
> It would be interesting to see what works by Pynchon are taught and with
> what frequency, and also to compare that with other writers. For example, I
> think Pynchon would come out above Kesey, but how would he fare against Roth
> or Barth? And how would that look if we studied syllabi from the UK? Or
> Germany?
>
> I know this isn't exactly what we've seen people discussing at the last few
> Pynchon conferences (as far as digital humanities goes), but it does seem
> like something that is achievable - please forgive my tech naivete/
> ignorance - and relevant to the study of Mr. Pynchon's work. After all, is
> not the inclusion of an author in syllabi a mark of an author's importance
> in a society? Most universities require reading Shakespeare for an English
> studies degree, far less require reading Marloweor Ben Johnson, unless one
> is pursuing specialization in Elizabethan literature. Telemann was bigger
> than Bach back in their day and Lope de Vega was feted more than poor
> Cervantes, but history often grants victory over time.
>
> Our Absent author's lack of visibility (a thing that has undergone some
> change) kept him so low profile for such a long time that he simply didn't
> blip very much on the cultural rader; both Roth and Barth, though nothing
> like Mailor the media hog, were far more a part of the public space. Are we
> seeing that shift the other way? Might we hazard the speculation that in 20
> - 30 years time (or more) the works of Barth and Roth will be reduced to one
> or two works in a survey course, as examples of the howling of white men,
> and Pynchon in a position homologous to that of Bach or Cervantes?
>
> So, any way to crunch and parse those Syllabi?
>
> ciao
> mc otis
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l