From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser

[Mark Kohut]

This is why we are all different people, as the psychologists, maybe even
Hillman are always saying.

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:47 AM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't have patience for literary stunts or one-joke novels - see how
> closed-minded I am? GR took my mind places it had never been. Maybe there's
> nowhere else to go? I got bored quickly with Beatty's novel and don't think
> my eyes could stand the look of Ellman's pages. Do I really want to spend
> 1700 pages with a reminiscing East German in NYC? I think not. I enjoyed
> reading Pnin, although it's Nabokov-lite. Currently reading The Fountain
> Overflows, by Rebecca West, which I'm enjoying despite its odd forays into
> the metaphysical.
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:12 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I try to resist the buried nostalgia often caught in our historic
>> appreciations.
>>
>> Although it is only new in English, Johnson's *Anniversaries* is within
>> a stone's arc of GR.
>> As is Lucy Ellmann's* Ducks, Newburyport *and is such a mental pleasure
>> to read. Like reading GR the second time, or AtD
>> after a lifetime of Pynchon.
>>
>> As is Beatty's *The Sellout.*
>>
>> And there are others.
>>
>> Just because GR is SOO great, the great American novel of the second half
>> of its century, at least, doesn't mean
>> others won't rock your world.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:05 AM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes. I'm too cynical to indulge in hero worship, as a rule, though I've
>>> probably indulged in fatuous admiration most in the literary sphere.
>>> Still,
>>> I've never felt an obligation to love everything that Pynchon - or Doris
>>> Lessing, or Thomas Mann, or Melville or Dostoevsky - has written.
>>>
>>> But I doubt I'll ever encounter a book that changed my worldview as much
>>> as
>>> Gravity's Rainbow, and that's sad to think.
>>>
>>> PS - I balked at using the word "sad." A good old word that's been
>>> tarnished in the tweets of the Orange Pustule.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 9:32 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Soon the curtain of one's literary heroes gracing us with new work will
>>> > close. The current obsessions of new and upcoming fiction writers I
>>> have
>>> > found are not mine, worthy as they are. I wont be one of those grumps
>>> > bemoaning the ascendance of a new generation of writers. But it does
>>> sadden
>>> > me a bit that soon there won't be anyone left for me to put on my
>>> personal
>>> > pedestal. Part of me realizes this is just natural. But I will miss the
>>> > excitement  I once had.
>>> > musing on a snowy winter's day
>>> >
>>> > rich
>>> > --
>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> >
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>