[lbo-talk] Pynchon (was James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History

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Thinking through my issues with Pynchon and Delillo, and why I don't think of their work as "great literature"....I've come to the conclusion that it's not so much their individual fault as it is the case that bourgeois forms have become completely exhausted, and they are still working these forms. The bourgeois novel (that transcendental form of homelessness) depends nevertheless upon certain positive relations holding between the individual and society, and these relations collapsed after WWI. After that, within the bourgeois world view, the best you can get are novels of ideas and magical realism.... both degraded forms. Kafka stands alone in the wreckage.

So, taking the bildungs roman, we see the end of that with "Ulysses" or "Mrs Dalloway" or even "Metamorphosis." Taking the historical novel, we see the end of that with, oh, I don't know, "Man Without Qualities."

After the collapse of these bourgeois forms, it's still possible to be Kafka, but it is not possible to be Tolstoy. 

The work of RB Traven suggests a shift in the novel (see "Bridge in the Jungle" and "Death Ship") -- a new relationship between writer and reader, but I'm hard put to describe it or to describe what is new/different/interesting about his authorial voice. But the seeds of a future great literature are sown by Traven; not by Pynchon or Delillo. 

Orwell tries to write about some of this in an essay called "Inside the Whale." I highly recommend it.

Joanna

----- Original Message -----

Joanna:


> As a literary work however, it is fairly thin beer. 

Meaning what?  You don't like it stylistically?


> I have also read Delilo, which left no lasting impression except the 
> unwillingness to read anything else by him. 

What did you start with?  I mean, I don't want to come across as one of those obnoxious fans who insist you started with the wrong thing, and that if you just read "work x" you'd appreciate it (I hate music fans who do that), but I'm curious to know what work by Delillo put you off.  I think the early, pre-White Noise stuff is fantastic, and White Noise itself is pretty great.  Some of his more recent stuff comes across as a bit cold and distant, but I think that's probably the intended effect.


> Gibson I don't know. 

Hm.  Well, I guess his seminal work would be "Neuromancer", but I have the feeling that anybody who didn't already read it in the 80s or early 90s and then tried to read it now would wonder what the big deal is.  Kind of like trying to listen to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music with ears accustomed to glitch techno.

Maybe some of the more recent stuff would be worth reading, though, like the trilogy that starts with Pattern Recognition.  

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