[lbo-talk] Charles Bowden

[123hop at comcast.net]

On one hand I found Gravity's Rainbow to be sophomoric: it was filled to the brim with little snippets of info that you'd know/recognize if you had gone to graduate school in the seventies. On the other hand, the book completely convinced me that WWII had never actually ended, and that, I thought, was brilliant and true, and it was information everyone else in the world either ignored or was hiding from me.

The "coldness" I refer to is not just about the lack of sentimentality. One meets with that in "The Stranger" or even, for that matter, in all of R.B. Traven. And yet, I would never call Traven cold. No, Pynchon's coldness lies in the absence of a speaking voice. When I read him, I'm always witnessing a writer adding another word and another and another.

Joanna

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org 
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 7:10:19 AM 
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Charles Bowden 

Angelus Novus 

I find labels like "hallucinatory" are often misapplied, but I found 
Gravity's Rainbow to be the one book I've ever read where it really applies 
because it immerses the reader completely in its universe. 

Hallucinations are logical! They are complete in themselves and internally 
consistent. A closed realm that can't be challenged. And precisely there is 
not anything in Gravity's Rainbow to offer an escape from its mad world. 
Compare Swift's Modest Proposal: there are a few lines in it which 'escape' 
its mad world. Pynchon refrains from the least wink at a world other than 
the one the book offers. I only read it once and it deserves several 
readings. But I think there are 'episodes' in it which begin quite 
innocently and "realistically," then as you follow them, suddenly you are in 
an impossible world that is fully coherent in its own terms. Quite 
wonderful. 

Carrol 

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