Arrggh ... VN

[ish mailian]

Curious What is a "human book" and can you apply the phrase to
Pynchon, and if so, how would you arrange his works from the most to
the least human? I've not read much of Boyd's work. Is this a term he
uses?

Thanks
I


On Fri, Nov 8, 2019 at 3:32 PM Douglas Holm via Pynchon-l
<pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
> Pnin is probably Nabokov's most "human" book (with Ada and its  successors the least). Few literary "tricks" except for maybe when the malapropy-in-English Pnin speaks "Russia" to contemporaries, his speech is marvelous.  Like two different guys.  The U of Washington Press has a book about the man who supposedly inspired Pnin.  The novel (really a set of short stories) makes a fine company piece to Pale Fire, in setting, and psychology.  Add to that Speak Memory, and one has a deeply compassionate trilogy of books on statelessness (among other things).
>
> Knopf is publishing a new collection of Nabokov interviews, letters, and essays in a couple of weeks, edited by Brian Boyd.
>
> By the way, the new novel, The Revisionaries by A R Moxon  from Melville House, is publicized as Pynchonesque, but glancing inside it seems more Wallace and Gaddis, and probably several more I don't recognize.
>
> > On Nov 8, 2019, at 10:37 AM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Picked up a copy of Pnin at my local bookseller today. I'll be reading it
> > at my own leisurely rate, but will definitely comment here, with spoiler
> > warnings, when moved to.
> >>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l