Subject: Re: Pynchon (was Re: NYC meeting)
From: Ed Fenning (ed361@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jan 13 2000 - 14:32:15 EST
--- AntiUtopia@aol.com wrote:
> Hey...hope you're willing to add one to the ranks of
> Pyn heads here. The
> only works I haven't finished of his are V and Slow
> Learner. I enjoyed
> Crying probably the most, but Mason and Dixon runs a
> close second. GR was
> brilliant, but too ugly.
Jim,
I started Mason and Dixon but put it down after
the first fifty pages or so, I think because I didn't
want to rush right through it and then wait another
I-don't-know-how-long for his next book like with
Vineland. (Which was sort of like Beethoven's 4th
symphony in between the 3rd and the 5th).
V. gets really diffuse towards the end and I'll
have to reread it. Slow Learner I've read parts of so
far and enjoyed.
Yeah, Gravity's rainbow; shouldn't Katje be a
Bananafisher contributing to this list, she's got the
spunk. Enzian, Slothrop and the gang.... though GR
was not ugly to me I do think the ending is terribly
bleak, beyond bleak almost. But when I think about
it, given everything that happened during that period,
maybe that's not too bad a thing for an author to
evoke; given that GR is not basically a book about the
"indominable spirit of survival and human goodness".
You do know about the "San Narcisco" Pynchon
website don't you? (just tried surfing there to get
the URL but it's responding with "Page Not Displayed"
-damn wouldn't you know it - hope this is only
temporary). It contains a section with all his
uncollected writings that includes, "Mercy and
Mortality in Vienna" - not in Slow Learner; a very
funny article he wrote for the Boeing house journal -
early '60s; and the excellent "Journey Into the Mind
of Watts" article written for the New York Times
Sunday magazine, late 60's around the time of the
Watts disturbances.
- Ed
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