Not P but Solenoid. (I so want to read this but who has enough time?)

[Mark Kohut]

Her name is Merve Emre, sorry.....

On Sun, Dec 4, 2022 at 3:55 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is a very bright and sensitive New Yorker-even critic/ reader who
> went over the top about Solenoid...(Not in the New Yorker).
> She is probably being chided and this will hang with her for a long
> while....Basically, she said although she had read many great books,
> she would call none of them a 'religious experience' but that this one
> was.....okay, okay......
>
> Anyway, my answer to your paranoia reflections is that when done
> right--early Pynchon---you have found a brilliant way to show how much
> of a world sees this way......that is, it is not naval gazing, but the
> opposite.......which is also why Pynchon can have that great line
> about paranoids having real enemies...
> in Nixon's America and not only there, paranoia saw reality.
>
> On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 9:23 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My ears always perk up when a Reviewer extols the extreme, exquisite
>> quality of an author’s writing. I find the extended prose poetry of
>> Pynchon’s writing to be its finest virtue, almost completely apart from any
>> narrative story. Almost like the insertion a song in the middle of a
>> musical film or play: a conscious heavy dose of poetic imagery.
>>
>> Separate from the beauty of the writing are the constructs of reality,
>> and the various levels in which the writer is acknowledging (even winking)
>> at the fact that he’s as an author, creating an artificial world that is
>> apt to be full of darkness and deceit and things that aren’t true.
>>
>> The author becomes a trickster, making layered constructions of “reality”
>> into a puzzle game for the reader. Paranoia trope seems like an endless
>> ride made more unpleasant by ever deeper versions of “gotcha!” Why,
>> then, is paranoia, considered a high level of satire among critics?
>>
>> Paranoia’s rabbit hole potentially is one’s own navel.  COL49 is one of
>> my least favorite novels by P.
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 8:23 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> this novel, anti-novel, getting incredible attention and
>>> this from a fine NYT review I post because part of Pynchon
>>> is that ole paranoia rag:
>>>
>>> He practices a sweeping solipsism that makes of paranoia a kind of
>>> totalizing faith. Every event, image or experience, whether common or
>>> outlandish, throbs with sinister meaning. Objects and memories from
>>> childhood bloom with late, apocalyptic significance in adulthood. Dreams
>>> contain legible clues for the arresting puzzles of waking life. This is
>>> the
>>> world as pure conspiracy, a web of impossibly esoteric interconnection.
>>> The
>>> book’s maximalism is no mere formalist tic, then, but a matter of
>>> necessity. Only a novel so sprawling, so unexpected, so incongruous could
>>> house such a sublime neurosis.
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>