Gore Vidal sez, Pynchon marked the end of the American novel (as in *killing* it).

[Jochen Stremmel]

"...I cannot think of a country today as unpleasant to live in as the
United States. The cultural and social climate that produced Robert Stone
and Thomas Pynchon isnt there anymore and that feels sad."

That's not intriguing but stupid if you ask me. And to say Doc was also a
medical doctor shows that the man has not only no imagination.

2016-03-02 15:49 GMT+01:00 Christopher <christophperec at gmail.com>:

> http://john-steppling.com/2015/01/where-dreams-die/
>
> I was reading some essays from the playwright John Steppling's blog and
> came across this which talks about Pynchon a bit. It's mostly about Robert
> Stone, and Anderson's adaptation of IV, and detective fiction in
> general...and much more that's quite interesting...but there's a nice, if
> brief, look at P.
>
> It starts out a little disparaging maybe (the reference to Gore Vidal's
> take on P) but doesn't remain so. He seems to be quite ambivalent about P
> (I recall that in another essay he says he doesn't know what he thinks of
> Pynchon's work but he knows he *does* think about it).
>
> Anyway, here are the most interesting bits in relation to Pynchon:
>
> "...I cannot think of a country today as unpleasant to live in as the
> United States. The cultural and social climate that produced Robert Stone
> and Thomas Pynchon isnt there anymore and that feels sad."
>
> (I don't live in the US but I find this intriguing so...thoughts on this
> anyone?)
>
> "The detective of *Inherent Vice*, also a medical doctor, is the
> detective who searches for his own desire. But where is desire to be found?
> Pynchon’s real thrust has always been detection, coupled to paranoia. And *Inherent
> Vice* is a retroactive detective story with a stoned detective who seems
> to connect to a dying 1950s white America as well as to the counter culture
> of Kesey and Stone, the Beats and Viet Nam. There is something one feels is
> just out of reach in Pynchon, and that is his particular road to the
> uncanny... If Moretti is at all right, and I’m not sure, that guilt is
> individual and conformity equals innocence, then perhaps that is the real
> point of *Inherent Vice*; which is in it’s way the point of *Dog Soldiers*
>  (*Who’ll Stop the Rain*) and that is that a society of domination has
> meant that difference is now materially guilty, not just mythically. Bly
> once said that when a society can no longer distinguish between the mythic
> and the everyday, that society is sick. The Salem witch trials being the
> example he used. The ruling class has always needed to create false
> difference."
>
>
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