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

[Mark Kohut]

And I forgot to mention that the influence of Hofstadter's
https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

is as pervasive arguably on Pynchon as is N.O. Brown on *Gravity's RAinbow*

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
>>
>