[lbo-talk] Faulkner/Pynchon (was: Charles Bowden)

[C. G. Estabrook]

This is well-put & describes my experience of these authors as well. I read The 
Sound and the Fury first year in college and saw myself as Quentin; I read V on 
my honeymoon as identified with Benny; but in several DeLillos I've never made a 
connection...

On 1/20/11 11:11 AM, magcomm wrote:
>> I agree with all of what you say here, but I think I know what
> Joanna's getting at. Pynchon is completely unsentimental and doesn't
> give the reader a lot to hold on to or a temporary refuge to hide in.
> He's not Dickens. Or even Faulkner.
>
> I agree that Pynchon is unsentimental, but when I first read "V" as a
> teenager, tears rolled down my face as I finished the chapter entitled
> "Mondaugen's Story" (and to quote Billy Wilder: I laugh at "Hamlet").
> Pynchon along with Faulkner seem to me to be writers who are so capacious
> that their works rather than providing refuge for a reader, grasp the
> reader in a robust embrace of experience and intellect.
>
> In contrast, DeLillo is a writer that I find "cold" - precise and sharp
> prose, but distancing, as if as a reader I am to look but not touch.
>
> Brian
>
>
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