Pynchon hearts Roth?

[Mark Kohut]

Are you still a little surprised when you think of how much
Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon worked into the trailer for BLEEDING EDGE?

"He's everywhere." Nice counterpoint to Pynchon being nowhere (in one
sense) yet, as great artist,
everywhere as well.

Did we all know that one of Roth's earliest stories, "The Contest for Aaron
Gold" was published in *Epoch,*
a Cornell University literary quarterly? Although this story was reprinted
in Martha Foley's* Best American Short Stories 1956, *Philip seems not to
have wanted it republished in
hardcover volumes. This story was written in the same period that his best
were being written, "Epstein"
and "The Conversion of the Jews" and the others in Goodbye, Columbus and
Five Short Stories.
i'm going to try to find out why (and get it and read it)

We know where Thomas was in 1956. Already committed to his career.

I have been reading and rereading Roth since his death, Sabbath's Theater
is a great book, his GR to loosely analogize,  but I want to
just say a few words about Letting Go, published in 1962 but set in fifties
America, one of Roth's neglected works.
I am not even in the middle of it yet (but this one is a sentimental
favorite and a reread)
Sprawling all over the place in story, in themes, in characters, it can
remind of how many feel about Against the Day. Close to as long and full of
"everything" Roth may
have learned about life and writing to that time and wanted to get down
with vaulting ambition. I also recommend it, I say needlessly.

But here's another Pynchon-related reason for this post: in the first
couple hundred pages, the word 'inconvenience" appears more frequently than
statistics might suggest.
One might say it is foreshadowing, such a common word to describe what will
be very great inconveniences coming up for all the major characters. It
cannot help
but remind this reader of Pynchon's lifelong use of the word and concept in
his fiction.

A..and, the phrase "mindless pleasures"--the working title for GR for
newbies to this list-- is used and 'mindless' more than once--once as a
major female character wishes to be a 'mindless sophomore' again.
In a novel where lustful love defines all kinds of decisions most of the
characters have made so far in their lives.

And once this character, a single mom of two who was not able to finish her
college education, wittily says "Let's call Erich Fromm" about a friend she
thinks should
get herself some psychological self-understanding, so to reduce it.

They, the scholars, are finding bits of exact phrases in Shakespeare's
plays, sometimes just two words from The Montaigne translation Shakespeare
read; from the Plutarch and his Ovid
and more. Words, like life and stories, are sucked up by great writers and
reused even half-consciously if that.

It is a wonder to appreciate.

 I think I can feel/see some homage to Bellow in some of the characters in
Letting Go and the whole novel starts with a major signaling that it is
structured like Portrait of a Lady; is Roth's most Jamesian
in style and has the same major theme (and some sub themes), I bet. Which I
can't see yet and my first reading was before I had ever read Portrait of a
Lady.