not P but Roth, Philip Roth

[Mark Kohut]

I just finished the latest in my Roth to the End
Lifelong Learning classes, *The Great American Novel. *

it was/is a great class imo and interesting regarding Pynchon
in one way. Roth said as he wrote this irreal baseball as myth
novel that "everyone" --other writers---was writing like this, not even
close to his basically solid, even heavy realism (mostly) to that time. It
seems clear he meant
writers like Pynchon and Barth and other black humorists, etc.

There are a couple--three interesting foreechoes [sic, my word if it
doesn't exist] for us at the end of this novel.
In the epilogue, narrated by the writer of the story, one Word Smith, who
is, a bit
crazed and obsessed, trying to get this manuscript we have just read
published.
He writes a letter to Chairman Mao, alluding to Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
saying
that he has written "a historical novel that does not accord with the
American history with which
they brainwash our little children in the schools." -----
I get a foreecho  of that kid's summary of how history is taught in *Against
the Day*, but that is probably just me.

Word Smith's next line is "I say 'historical', doubtless they would say
'hysterical' " reminding me of that
famous description of Pynchon's way of penetrating history so insightfully.

There is one other place with nice Pynchon overtones, re Eisenhower,a comic
couple lines,  but I did not mark it and can't remember where.