Pynchon hearts Roth?

[Mark Kohut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA0yAcfnuuI

On Tue, Jul 31, 2018 at 1:33 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for this, Mark. Has P written anything explicitly paying attention
> to Roth?
>
> > On Jul 30, 2018, at 4:36 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>