Peter Coviello: Vineland Reread

[Robert Mahnke]

I had missed Michel's email a month ago, and was not aware of the Coviello
book when I stumbled on it this weekend on a manga-gathering trip with my
daughter to a local Barnes & Noble. Having now read it it, I'm glad I did.
I struggled with Vineland the first time I read it but enjoy it more every
time I revisit it. In March 2018 I sent a list of some critical pieces on
Vineland that I have enjoyed, and I would certainly add the Coviello book
to that list.

Charles, I wouldn't say that what you quote is a revelation, more like a
quick summary of part of the argument. Maybe CUP needs marketing interns?

David, I'm curious as to why you call it sexist, and sorry you dislike it.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 3:07 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Once "postmodernists" get you, you are obscure, inhospitable, technically a
> cold technician and
> a puzzle to be solved. In general.
>
> They were not his early readers, mostly because they were yet to be
> created. Electricity had not hit
> the frankensteins yet.
>
> On Sat, Jan 2, 2021 at 4:16 PM Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > *Departing fromvisions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and
> > obscure, hediscloses an author far more companionable and humane. *
> >
> >
> > I don't know why this is a revelation. Were Pynchon just a technician, he
> > would have been a 2 or 3 hit wonder.
> >
> >
> > But I appreciate all efforts to labor it.
> >
> >
> > love,
> >
> > cfa
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 2, 2021, 11:59 AM <bulb at vheissu.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Happy New Year!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Anyone seen this one? Publication month January 2021.  Ordering for
> > Europe
> > > is through John Wiley so it will take ages before it arrives as they
> > don't
> > > have it on stock today.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > http://cup.columbia.edu/book/vineland-reread/9780231185219
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Vineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking
> > > Pynchon's
> > > return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic
> > Gravity's
> > > Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling curiosity.
> > > However,
> > > for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked Vineland opens up new ways of
> > > thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live
> in
> > > the rough currents of history.
> > >
> > > Beginning with his early besotted encounters with Vineland, Coviello
> > reads
> > > Pynchon's offbeat novel of sixties insurgents stranded in the Reaganite
> > > summer of 1984 as a delirious stoner comedy that is simultaneously a
> work
> > > of
> > > heartsick fury and political grief: a portrait of the hard afterlives
> of
> > > failed revolution in a period of stifling reaction. Offering a roving
> > > meditation on the uses of criticism and the practice of friendship, the
> > > fashioning of publics and counterpublics, the sentence and the police,
> > > Coviello argues that Vineland is among the most abundant and
> far-sighted
> > of
> > > late-century American excursions into novelistic possibility. Departing
> > > from
> > > visions of Pynchon as the arch-postmodernist, erudite and obscure, he
> > > discloses an author far more companionable and humane. In Pynchon's
> > > harmonizing of joyousness and outrage, comedy and sorrow, Coviello
> finds
> > a
> > > model for thinking through our catastrophic present.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Michel.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>