David Foster Wallace vs. Thomas Pynchon

Man, it's been a long fuckin time since I read any actual literature.

Barthelme = somebody else?

but of course, else we would call him by a different name.

hate all these people except for Pynchon

may lodge comedy vote for Brent Easter Ellis tho lol

Pynchon > John Barth > DFW > BEE > > > > Jonathan Franzen

split on my vote tho bc I feel like Barth kinda underrated, while Pynchon, tho better, is overrated

xxsxp: yes. just couldn't spell him.

poll missing Richard Brautigan

tho i haven't read Busy Monsters yet (i want to!) William Giraldi seems like a good fit for this bunch too...

are we just listing authors we like now, cuz I don't see the common thread through all the names mentioned

voting Jose Saramago over Don DeLillo

no wait David Mitchell

split on my vote tho bc I feel like Barth kinda underrated, while Pynchon, tho better, is overrated

― Mordy, Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:59 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is probably true imo.

I love Barth and Pynchon. I've never read any Wallace or Franzen and I don't give a shit what anyone else thinks, I LOVED some of BEE's early books. A lot.

RIP Nicholson Baker

I liked that one book I read by him with all the sex.

none of the people mentioned in this thread are writers

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, July 8, 2011 1:40 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol ENBB

the only thing that has stuck with me from Nicholson Baker's writing is some guy sticking his dick in a gloryhole in a freshly painted room

I totally have read Infinite Jest now that I think about it but it was a long long time ago. I am voting for BEE just because I'll probably eb the only one and I don't really get this poll anyway.

Gaddis

x-post - I can vividly remember scenes from The Fermata because I was pretty o_O at some of them.

are we just listing authors we like now, cuz I don't see the common thread through all the names mentioned

except for Franzen all the others (and the ones i mentioned) arguably mining a kinda similar style no? hyper referential, dense, 'intellectual' works by male authors?

oh also he likes card catalogs, I remember that

xp

pretty badass to forget you've read infinite jest

BEE the other outlier but i think it's just his ambition exceeds his grasp. he wants to be more like these other guys imho

BEE is an "intellectual" how now?

haha exactly

tbh I'm near certain I didn't finish it DHL

so I should have said read "at least some parts of"

lol DLH not DHL

except for Franzen all the others (and the ones i mentioned) arguably mining a kinda similar style no? hyper referential, dense, 'intellectual' works by male authors?

BEE doesn't really have a similar style to the others

the first three poll options I can see being grouped together (and my suggested DeLillo addition was serious), but after that I'm just... waht the only thing these guys all have in common is that they write in English and are well known

DFW v. tacos

did anyone else read lunar park? that kinda laid bare how meager the BEE aesthetic was. he was trying so hard to be substantial but it was just so shitty.

its a contemp cannon of authors its irritating to read about on the internet

except for Franzen all the others (and the ones i mentioned) arguably mining a kinda similar style no? hyper referential, dense, 'intellectual' works by male authors?

― Mordy, Thursday, September 6, 2012 6:08 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It was originally just going to be Pynchon vs. Wallace because of some article somebody linked to on the other Wallace thread. Then I was like, well, Wallace really was in a conversation with Barth too. But what about the guy I can't spell? Oh well, just say Gaddis and them. Then joke entries for Franzen and Ellis for literary sour grapes comedy.

i remember there was a whole subplot about some kinda chucky doll? idk.

what the fuck is this poll even

lol otm

Que - Always tacos over anything else.

its a contemp cannon of authors its irritating to read about on the internet

― Lamp, Thursday, September 6, 2012 6:13 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm gonna write in for tao lin then, people freak out over that dude, it's so irritating how irritated they get

i like this poll BTW

we should do a poll of shitty literary writers. BEE and Franzen obv included, throw in Foer too, Tao Lin... I'm sure there are other most hated options

jack kerouac

jane austen

god

Rick Moody

gmail.com

james joyce amirite

pretty embarrassed that my honest answer to this poll is dfw

It could be worse. You could be the lone vote for BEE.

i don't think dfw is an embarrassing answer - pale king as good as anything i've read in contemp english literature

i'd vote for robert downey jr in the afterschoolspecial version of less than zero

naguib mahfouz

x-post lol the movie version is so bad it's good material in my book

lots of sex with clothes on in that. Nicholson Baker was taking notes.

naguib mahfouz

will stab anyone who has anything bad to say about this guy you've been warned

i only read palace walk and have basically forgotten it but i think i liked it. i have a copy of palace of desire but i'd have to restart. even if it Doesn't Really Matter i'd still have to restart.

oh no wait i had to read midaq alley in a middle eastern history class. that i liked a lot. "the cripple-maker."

i haven't read any literature in awhile. i started wolf hall a few weeks and it was really really good but my literature gland is kinda weak these days. i prefer reading challopy philosophy

everyone I know who says they don't read has read wolf hall and they have nothing but good things to say

Gaddis

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 6 September 2012 18:07 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's really good. i had read the memoir (giving up the ghost) and beyond black and enjoyed both, but wolf hall she's at the height of her game

Mahfouz is amazing - early stuff is very Proustian in scope and tone, then he got more into this extended allegorical/magical realist sort of style, and by the end he had distilled even that style down to stories/sequences that were more like aphorisms or anecdotes. incredible breadth and depth to his body of work.

i did try reading some mieville a year or so ago when everyone said it would be my thing. pretty mediocre i thought :/

i liked the crying of lot 49. it was short. i liked lost in the funhouse for similar reasons. plus funny. i liked david foster wallace when he was writing sort stories and magazine articles. these three belong together, like the items in a sensible candy bar. franzen i know nothing about, except that i bailed on the corrections. it was not at all short. brett easter eggis i don't really like, but at least find "readable". i.e., undemanding, thus possessed of an admirable humility. luna park reminded me of my father and made me almost-cry, and is, with wallace's "westward the course of empire takes its way", the only thing i've ever found emotionally resonant by any of these authors.

so barth. funny wins.

i did try reading some mieville a year or so ago when everyone said it would be my thing. pretty mediocre i thought :/

plus boring

that you're a barth fan makes me like u so much more, contend

robert coover, w/ the poss exception of gaddis, is better than any of these other dudes

naguib mahfouz

will stab anyone who has anything bad to say about this guy you've been warned

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier)

adrift on the nile is one of the best books i've ever read

coover! i read his babysitter story when i was in junior high and found it super titillating

Oh man, I gotta get Spiralli in here - he loves Mieville.

pynchon over barth over dfw w/ ellis far behind. gaddis or delillo or barthelme would all slot in right behind pynchon in some order for me. never read franzen - impression was more epic, less funny updike: any accuracy to this? joyce, austen over the lot.

wait Mieville is like a shitty fantasy/sci-fi writer how did he get dumped in here...?

if we're including genre dudes then I'm voting Moorcock duh

would rather read any of these ppl (except ellis) than jane austen.

early franzen owes some debt to pynchon and puts him a lot closer to foster wallace that queasy intensity &c but later franzen is like bad george eliot mostly i guess

would rather read any of these ppl except ellis than jane austen

moorcock otm

donald barthelme once said "anybody can write a beautiful sentence." mieville disproves that one.

Melville, Euegen O'Neill: clumsy geniuses.

Which of these authors' works look the coolest when you're holding them at an awkwardly show-offy angle in front of your face while riding the train?

depends who's watching

delaney seems the closest sf author to these other dudes (tho' yeah, there are def bits of moorcock quite similar to pynchon, esp), but Limbo by bernard wolfe deserves to be much better known imho:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Wolfe

lamp calling him 'foster wallace' like it's all one long surname is hilarious but maybe he's doing that on purpose to rankle dfw stans

I call him wally

Davey Fo Wallier

a new urban townhome development in elegant fowa

next to the alexander wang flagship

fosty

De gustibus non disputandum est

but polling is ok

Pynchon.

i liked david foster wallace when he was writing sort stories and magazine articles...i bailed on the corrections.

same w/me. but long books per se don't bother me, i read gravity's rainbow fitfully over the course of year, glad i did. but i sorta gave up on pynchon after vineland, still have that copy of mason/dixon sitting uncracked on the shelf. haven't kept up w/pynchon. his latest sounds dopey. franzen seems like a well-intentioned windbag, his new yorker essay on dfw was heartfelt but reading it was like chasing a shaggy dog.

joyce, austen over the lot.

― balls, Thursday, 6 September 2012 18:41 (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha c'mon

in that case i am having a write-in vote for william shakespeare, geoffrey chaucer, and virgil

ha! xp!

(adjusts pince nez)

Shakespeare, my dears, Shakespeare!

i might have shared this non-anecdote before but this anthropologist girl i know who doesn't read that much was drunk the other day and really effusive about how great this author she'd started reading was, who was called david foster wallace, and he's so good, he's amazing, have you heard of him

i post this not to make fun of her but because it brought home to me that there are people who found their lives on totally different assumptions to mine

hey John Barth - I read Giles Goat Boy so long ago I can't remember much about it

this summer I read Conversation In The Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa, that was 600+ page novel that managed to be epic: complex in terms of plot and characters yet concise in the prose dept. even in translation, w/Llosa you really hear the rhythm and cadence of Spanish speakers. I think Franzen could learn a lot from him.

xpost what assumptions are those? seems like she's just not a part of the same discourses as yourself (irl or internet)

same w/me. but long books per se don't bother me, i read gravity's rainbow fitfully over the course of year, glad i did. but i sorta gave up on pynchon after vineland, still have that copy of mason/dixon sitting uncracked on the shelf. haven't kept up w/pynchon. his latest sounds dopey. franzen seems like a well-intentioned windbag, his new yorker essay on dfw was heartfelt but reading it was like chasing a shaggy dog.

― (REAL NAME) (m coleman)

lol, every word of this is true for me, too. glad i read gravity's rainbow (and V.), less glad i read vineland, quickly gave up on mason/dixon, haven't looked back.

V. is alltime

xpost what assumptions are those? seems like she's just not a part of the same discourses as yourself (irl or internet)

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Thursday, 6 September 2012 19:50 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was the joke i was going for, yeah

gravity's rainbow > vineland > against the day > mason & dixon > inherent vice> lot 49 > v.

i have that reversed entirely except gravity's 3rd best for me

let's poll it! okay let's not poll it

i would probably put slow learner on the left hand end somewhere, too

yeah, of the few i've read:

lot 49 > v. > gravity's rainbow > vineland > etc

george saunders

lot 49 is pynchons best imo

pynchon maybe over dfw? idk i love infinite jest so much that its hard to say

DFW is more personally affecting. Pynchon was more stylistically and compositionally groundbreaking. FRanzen was a big boring miniseries of a novel.

do people care about Barth anymore? I feel like they did maybe in the 70's, and then never again. Certainly when I was in my early 20's and into metafiction and pretentious I thought he was great but no-one really credited him at the time. Then DFW came around, and Coover got some traction, but Barth still seemed overlooked or relegated to the garage sales of university towns. Oddly just two hours ago, I bought a pristine first edition of Chimera at a bookstore for $10.

does it have tits on the cover

what about William Vollmann? Does anyone really care about him? I pretended to and tried to for a few years there and then I just gave up.

rising up, rising down is pretty good

I've always gotten Barth, Barthelme, and Barthes confused and can't say any of them left an impression on me

Vollmann did some good stuff, primarily his short story collections (Rainbow, Atlas) but his preoccupations with prostitutes and just general degradation got kinda tiresome for me after awhile

i have been thinking abt some of the really lost dudes recently - anybody remember when mark leyner was going to bust literature wide open?

i liked bright and risen angels a lot

am in fairly close agreement w/ thomp's ranking eg

gravity's rainbow > vineland > mason & dixon > slow learner > against the day > inherent vice > the crying of lot 49 > v

gravity's rainbow seems to me far away and his best work - still the best invocation of london i've ever read - whereas v at times seems like self-parody

Barth: wrote novels
Barthelme: (donald) wrote mainly short stories
Barthelme: (f) his brother, wrote something else, dunno, never read them
Barthes: wrote criticism and not fiction

i read and enjoyed a Leyner book when i was like 12 and tend to think of it as the kind of thing that only self-impressed 12 year olds should really enjoy

guy writers

yeah I remember when the first leyner book came out. I was an inifiniately hot and intense dot. blah blah. now he writes like, humor books or something.

fred barthelme wrote (writes?) novels

barthes killed a bunch of authors. all of them actually.

all of vollmann's books have 'rising' or 'risen' or 'angel' in the title. I saw him read once, he brought a gun. also he was kind of a freak, not in a good way, in a creepy "i don't want to live on the same street as this guy' way.

DFW was really nice the two times I saw him read. Funny, engaging.

i think one is called europe something tbf to be even fairer i can imagine hes a p terrible person

what is this bullshit
Voted for somebody else

xpost
europe central

paul auster seemed a p big deal at one point, at least in the uk, but his stock seems to have fallen in recent years, at least in the uk

the prolegomena to vollmann's 'calculus of violence' thing is all about how beautiful this one knife he owns is, there are pictures

leyner had his first non-'humour' book in ages this year, all part of the whole back-to-the-late-80s-early-90s thing that's going on you know

auster is shite!!

Auster decided to devote his time to making shitty movies instead afaict. He had a good run tho.

sorry i mean but he is. there's a marketing component i guess, he seems made to exist in faber paperbacks. there was a guy who worked on him at my undergrad who had a picture of himself and paul auster in his office, auster looked real uncomfortable. i find it so weird that lydia davis married that, likewise sivi hustvedt (sp, probably)

BEE has been mercilessly tweet-slamming DFW all day

yes but are any of them any good

didn't leyner just come out with a new novel?

...

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llak0ehEAF1qbl75h.jpg

jordan, i am so sad you have me killfiled

I like Vollmann more than DFW, as far as maximalists with footnotes go.

i was looking for the interview where wallace goes in on ellis, salon have already dug it up -- http://www.salon.com/2012/09/06/bret_easton_ellis_hates_david_foster_wallace/

Also lump Vollmann and DFW together as authors of doorstop-sized books that, in the end, are collages of short chapters.

just had this weird sensation like someone is calling my name from a far-away room

xp

writer fights are so hilarious and sad, especially between guy writers

DFW: You’re just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it’s a kind of black cynicism about today’s world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what’s always distinguished bad writing—flat characters, a narrative world that’s cliched and not recognizably human, etc.—is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. You can defend “Psycho” as being a sort of performative digest of late-eighties social problems, but it’s no more than that.

Fucking all time

writer fights are so hilarious and sad, especially between guy writers

not if they take place on twitter

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/general-updates/bret-easton-ellis-on-dfw.html

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/general-updates/bret-easton-ellis-on-dfw-part-ii.html

(n.b. these are pretty boring links, it's ellis saying politely dismissive things in response to being asked the question.) i guess ellis feels like the statute of limitations is up, that or he's tweeting while high (this seems the saddest thing to do, in the 21st century)

ha xp

If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?

this is v otm tho ellis for sure dabbled in this himself

i mean WALLACE

not if they take place on twitter

― Lamp, Thursday, September 6, 2012 5:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if only dfw had lived to see the day rip

i always read a new paul auster novel because every one is like an REM album, "the best since x". and, like REM albums, they never measure up. NY Trilogy is his highpoint though, and Last Things and Music of Chance are really good. But everything since has been increasingnly frustrating and annoying. Book of Illusions and Oracle Night just let you down at the end. Man in the Dark was the fucking worst. Sunset Park looks good though. I'm sure I'll hate it if I read it though.

I want to re-read inifinite jest but I don't want anyone to see me doing it, so I guess I'll have to get an e-reader version.

'goon that interview is circa wallace's big turn to going all humanist and reading dostoyevsky and shit, in 1993

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?fa=customcontent&GCOI=15647100621780&extrasfile=A09F8296-B0D0-B086-B6A350F4F59FD1F7.html

leviathan was good, ny trilogy hella overrated just cause it was his most guy writer book

thank you lamp btw for dusting off that vintage post of mine

u know youre in trouble when you look to dostoyevsky for humanism

i voted for daddy

lagoon that is crazy talk

It just cracks me up that Ellis made himself into a guy people talk about again, via twitter alone

guy writers vs lady writers poll

i always think ellis started writing for suicidegirls.com but then i remember that was palahniuk

Anything he tweets is pretty mild compared to, say, Houellebecq.

ellis writes about competitive polo for grantland.com

lagoon that is crazy talk

― the late great, Thursday, September 6, 2012 5:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i came here to guy write and talk crazy and im all out of guy writing

xxp fuck those bizarro fiction losers

i see what you mean if you're only talking about the idiot and notes from the underground

I mean, Stephen King called Nicholson Baker's Vox a "meaningless little finger paring." I'm sure any established writer has peers they find overrated. I like Ellis's tweets.

but what about the gambler, crime & punishment, brothers k, dream of ridiculous man, etc

if you cut brothers k off two pages earlier it's the most nihilistic shit imaginable

I meet ppl from time to time who are like I love literature I love brett easton ellis and I get all quiet and generally try not to make my face all crazy for a sec

I mean, his voice is cut from the cloth of Didion and Robbe-Grillet, so putting it out there as literature isn't the craziest idea.

I must've forgot about brett easton ellis' banana farm book

the other day i saw someone on a feminist blog complaining about what douchebags men were who put 'sex-positive' as a descriptor in their online dating profiles

anyway, nicholson baker

its true that in dostoyevskys middle period he has some under appreciated humanist works such as his short story i dont think theres something deeply fundamentally wrong w/just being alive, srsly, guys... guys and the unfinished novel i am trying really hard to write a single character thats not some sort of damaged misfit

<3 lagoooooooooon

I dont

*thinks dastardly thoughts*

I don't know if what BEE writes is "literature", but he, definitely writes books, with pages and sentences and paragraphs in them. I'll give him that.

btw anyone itt hating on barthelme is a complete idiot

Barthelme's Ellis parody.

xp

it's more than that though, in the gambler he expresses great sympathy for all people and their addictive vices. crime & punishment has the eternally faithful and forgiving sonya, as far as the nihilism in brothers k goes the small acts of human kindness and solidarity that permeate the family are imo prefiguring the humanism of french existentialists

- i am trying really hard to write a single character thats not some sort of damaged misfit -

this is a type of humanism in itself

a lurid cartoonish humanism

i liked the possessed or w/e its called in english

im not sure its 'humanist' tho

i mean i love dostoyevsky, guy can write like a motherfucker, but he in only the most convoluted generous reading a humanist

well i mean i thought the general agreement was that dostoyevsky seems all the time to be swinging between poles of 'god will fix it' 'god will fix it but we can live in a worthwhile way anyhow' 'no we're all fucked', okay you can't swing between three poles but yeah

like his relation to the possibility of a humanism comes from a place of negative capability, to suggest he had a 'humanist' 'program' would be off-base, but it's certainly not a completely irrelevant idea

all credit due lag00n has been killing it recently

like his relation to the possibility of a humanism comes from a place of negative capability

that's what i meant by the french existentialist ref

we are capable of kindness while facing the horror vacuui of life, that's humanism

poomanism

^^literature

we are capable of kindness while facing the horror vacuui of life, that's humanism

― the late great, Thursday, September 6, 2012 5:41 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh i think one thing that characterizes a lot of these guy writers is that the kindness is generally rather meager and futile in the face of the horror, a starving old lady feeds the last bread crust to her drowning grandchild, its often more sentimental and concerned w/symbolism than humanist imho

y so serious

tbh its something that ive been thinking abt recently cause i like a lot of said guy writers but im somewhat disturbed by the level of their emotional alienation

iirc sontag breaks it down much better than me in the intro to "summer in baden-baden" which was influential to me in my reading of d

i don't know man, maybe there's nihilist and humanist readers, i think in wallace and especially pynchon there's actually a great undying love of humanity

unfailing maybe

like the orgy scene in gravity's rainbow, unstinting admiration for the riot of all life's, uh, combinations

where's delillo

wallace is def more into the idea of liking the world but then of course wrote extensively abt his problems pulling that off - pychons characters never really felt like people particularly to me tho ive only read like one and a half of his books

what the fuck is this poll even

i mean, i love DFW but Pynchon is just beyond
i guess also beyond polls

pynchon def scrambles my brain more

i would def vote for delillo under other, or barthelme tho i dont know if he really fits w/these dudes, not that franzen or ellis do either

tbh its something that ive been thinking abt recently cause i like a lot of said guy writers but im somewhat disturbed by the level of their emotional alienation

― lag∞n, Thursday, September 6, 2012 2:55 PM (7 minutes ago)

otm, i feel the same way. and i think the "a great undying love of humanity" stuff that so often goes along with this genre often feels more like a self-aggrandizing and sentimental affectation than legit affection.

DFW clearly has an honest love and sympathy for his fellow saddos and addicts

ya i def agree that wallace is more emotional nuanced

y'all are such harsh cultural critics

who is the most humanist forumer

the...humanest....if you will

y'all are markov chains afaict

books, huh

*throws garbage* go back to yr blog, max

i voted for thomas pynchon. i really liked the ny trilogy when i read it but i havent read any other auster. BEE is a hilarious troll

i tried to read a lot of women authors this year,

= "Watched Girls"

burn

def. doing this guy writers v lady writers poll

fwiw i meant it in a appeals to guys more than a are guys way, and guys as a subset of males who are not always necessarily male

guyville

have fun with that poll!

Don't really understand how you could read Infinite Jest and not see the author's sympathy towards humanity. Pynchon gets more interested at it as his career progresses - both Mason & Dixon and Against The Day in particular.

Franzen writes more obviously recognisable 'human beings' but god does he find it difficult to disguise his contempt for them.

i've been meaning to read the first two franzens for a while, but on the other hand i haven't

Pynchon pretty easily, with 'Gaddis or something', just Gaddis in fact, 2nd. Not much bothered by the rest, but I like easter ellis - good at surface, & usually pulls off something interesting.

Pynchon ranking for me:
gr ≥ m&d > Lot 49 > IV > Vineland > ATD > V

Liked how 'genre fiction' ws discussed alongside this stuff.

I should re-read GR; JR is one book I feel like reading in the first place. But its just a kind of liberal satire. Sure its amazing on one level, but wonder if it amounts to much in the end? Feels like it would be talking to the converted.

Couldn't read Barth, or re-read Barthelme again or DFW...just doesn't interest me. Possibly because I feel way too old, and there is a cut-off point.

Somebody else is what I'd go for = Jim Thompson, if you read 10-15 of his pulps together its probably a bigger achievement than what most of this crowd have managed.

the ways in which the pleasures of reading 2000 pages of related genre fiction approach those of reading encylopedic novels is something under-discussed actually

I'd go Wallace (by whom I believe I have read everything), Pynchon (Vineland [<333], GR, Lot 49, half each of M&D & V.), Franzen (The Corrections, a NYer article), Ellis (Less Than Zero, the movie American Psycho). I admit this is ... idiosyncratic. Guess I should read The Recognitions, huh.

I've never read Barth; it seems like it'd be pointless after having read "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way." Maybe I'm wrong. Did like the bits of Coover I've read, though.

thompson is great, but he's a bit like PKD - wrote too much, wrote some very bad books, didn't have the luxury of refining and polishing even his very best work. the fact that there was nearly a twenty year gap between The Recognitions and JR suggests that wasn't such a problem for Gaddis :-)

And I'm not sure LIBERAL satire is totally fair or accurate - outside of his fiction, Gaddis seemed to be a real cultural conservative (ie none of that avant-garde shit for him) and his later books share some of the same curdled misanthropy with the Bellow (a Gaddis admirer) of The Dean's December etc

Yeah I know Jim wrote thrash (in a bad way) but some of his best bks have such concentrated power and hold on my mind. Know its not too polished but I don't know if polishing would really help -- the conditions under which this stuff was written under created disadvantages as well as advantages too.

Sorry about that stuff re: JR, upthread. Comes from some of the bits I've read about it (maybe on ilx, was years ago, can't remember). Really like misanthropic writing (Celine, Bernhard, Jelinek) so if its in that vein sign me up (would borrow it today but I think someone has nicked a copy of this from my local library *sigh*)

Also I'd be interested in reading Slow Learner.

One more for the somebody else = Hubert Selby.

rising up, rising down is pretty good

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, September 6, 2012 3:40 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you for real read the whole thing? isn't it a million pages long

i didn't enjoy inherent vice, it seemed like a younger writer with a TP hardon decided to do a cross between lebowski and cheech and chong

Franzen writes more obviously recognisable 'human beings' but god does he find it difficult to disguise his contempt for them.

A good poll would be 'human beings' vs. 'sentences.'

gad i need to sell my copy of rising up & rising down

iirc far and away the most legit thing nicholson baker ever wrote was a chilling tale of horror involving potatoes and soup

that's a good pun

rising up, rising down is pretty good

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, September 6, 2012 3:40 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you for real read the whole thing? isn't it a million pages long

― catbus otm (gbx), Saturday, September 8, 2012 2:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Man getting ahold of the 7-volume McSweeney's edition of that would thrill me. I swear I saw it in a Border!s one time years ago.

On the other hand I'm still barely 10% done with Imperial

i have the abridged one-volume edition and i read it random-access. usually in the bathroom. i like it! but then something like 40% of it is about the bolsheviks.

Voted Ellis

Gaddis

― Mr. Que, Thursday, 6 September 2012 18:07 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― Ward Fowler, Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:26 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the only wrong answer to this is ellis. and franzen.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

voted pynchon, although I honestly only love him through GR, didn't like Vineland, couldn't finish Mason and Dixon, haven't bothered with the last two yet. I love all of DFW's output though, but you can't deny V and GR.

DeLillo 4 eva

On the other hand I'm still barely 10% done with Imperial

10% Imperial = 3 Imperial Bedrooms

voted Pynchon tho b/c I hate voting for the 'other' poll option

couldn't finish Mason and Dixon

I'm a huge DFW fan, so he got my vote, but, seriously, you need to finish Mason and Dixon. It just gets better and better as you go.

i woudl have to restart it to do that, since I started reading it in 1994 or something.

Oh, haha! It was really good though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Disappointed I missed this poll. Sort of shocked that a poll was even possible. Pynchon head and shoulders above the rest. Gaddis is the only one who ever did anything close. Lot 49 is Pynchon's worst, universally acknowledged by all true headz.

auster is one-note, and miserable at it. ellis trumps him & franzen by a landslide. the problem is that ellis can write really well when he feels like it, but he just doesn't usually even try.

I don't even think wallace was in conversation w/ pynchon, tho I could be dissuaded. Barth was much more what he was about (see westward empire, etc.) Like even treating pynchon as metafiction (or pomo, or much else) I think is v. point-missing. But I'm v. opinionated about the p.

i ask again: where was delillo?

(Hey, where's Bolano in this bitch?)Pynchon might well agree with everything in those two posts, Sterling: seems like he said he didn't want Crying published as a stand-alone, or maybe at all. I first saw it, or some of it, as (I think) "The World, The Flesh, and Mrs. Oedipa Maas," in an ancient library copy of Esquire. I liked it, ditto Slow Learner, though that's more for confirmed fans'compulsive collectors (some reviewers mentioned other, still-uncollected stories also worth reading). Non-headz may also dig his intro, expressing his frustration with his writing, sometimes mocking himself, and even when he likes something says it seems to have been done by elves, he doesn't remember writing it. I picked up the hipster detective novel, but quickly put it down: the opening pages seemed to squirm with self-consciousness, and maybe more frustration. I'll give it another shot someday. Meanwhile, hark the herald Thurn Und Taxis
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/MutedPosthorn.png

Oh yeah and this http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/dfw-week-did-infinite-jest-start-out-as-an-autobiography.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true

the intro to 'slow learner' is one of my favorite things pynchon's ever written -- his semi-recent intro to '1984' is great too. i can't think of any writer i'd rather read an introduction by.

Lot 49 is Pynchon's worst, universally acknowledged by all true headz

Crazy talk. Lot 49 is grebt but requires repeated exposure. There's stuff in there it's not even possible to clock until you've read it through at least once.

oedipa maas is a really great character. i don't know how pynchon managed to make such a passive character so fully developed, idiosyncratic, and endearing.

for some reason i always picture her as looking like '60s era joan didion, probably because of the california thing and because pynchon describes her as wearing sunglasses.

that works just fine imo

"There's stuff in there it's not even possible to clock until you've read it through at least once." <-- this is hardly a striking statement about a pynchon book.

I think my fav pynchon moment lately is the scooby-doo callback in Inherent Vice, or the record store window. Just because they're fresher, I tend to think about them more often. But for real, both IV and Vineland are way better than lot 49 in the "slim, california counterculture" side of pynchon's work. I like IV and AtD so much now that I've sort of stopped trying to rep for Vineland, because there's just too much good stuff (which was unexpected, surprising, and wonderful) so it's not worth like making the case for the "one underdog book" or whatever. Still, thumbs down to Lot49. Even if there's deeper stuff going on, it's too easy for it to permit really shallow readings.

this is like dismissing Tool "because of their fans"

i mean, i agree that due to length it's the most frequently and (therefore?) poorly taught Pynchon, but i'm not going to hold that against it.

yeah, kinda like when I got back to "A Rose For Emily" in the context of the expanded Portable Faulkner (or the original, single-LP version of Jack Johnson, after the rest of The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, or the '75 double-LP Basement Tapes after the rest of A Tree With Roots). Initially, I had trouble adjusting to the overview. But I'll take Crying over A Rose any day (no Pynchon vs Faulkner thread please!)(oh alright) Mrs. Maas will always be the awesome older lady to me, no matter how old I get--no not like Mrs. Robinson, Mrs. M. is the good-hearted heroine, and not too xpost passive, she's on a quest!

"A Rose For Emily" really isn't up to most of The Portable though, and way over-anthologized and taught (although my English prof Mom incl a good video of it, with Anjelica Huston, I think)

Pynchon's intro to Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me is good too;ditto the book reviews (haven't seen any in a long time). Enjoyed his competition w Stephen King, to see who could write the most blurbs.

for some reason i always picture her as looking like '60s era joan didion

EXACTLY

this is how i will always think of lot 49:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NIt99JpnZj0/UDIsW4mzmRI/AAAAAAAAD1U/R5gZHKv9qKg/s320/thomas+pynchon+crying+of+lot+49+cover.jpg

too easy to permit shallow readings isn't a crit of the fans tho, but the book. remember if you've read SL that pynchon is also the guy who wrote "entropy" and "low-lands". I mean V has hints of this stuff too -- precocious, but very glib and young. Like I wouldn't be this critical if later P didn't just blow it out of the water, in terms of subtlety and depth, characterwise and thematically. Most authors never even get to Lot49 level, or close. But that doesn't mean it's nearly his "best". You don't have a single character in that early stuff that can really match even a pointsman, much less a zoyd.

tbh i think part of me will always secretly side with the book you can read in an afternoon over the book that consumes 2-3 months of your reading life.

mindful pleasures: essays on pynchon

worth a read imo

http://c2.bibtopia.com/h/500/964/375964500.0.m.jpg

J.D.: then go with vineland or IV.

sterl, what attractions are there for you in the family drama picaresque part of atd? the one with traverse and the mathematician and uh the other in their triangle-thing across uh... eurasia? i really enjoyed atd but i haven't yet reread it to get a feel for how the seemingly weaker parts fit together in unappreciated ways.

Like I wouldn't be this critical if later P didn't just blow it out of the water, in terms of subtlety and depth, characterwise and thematically. Most authors never even get to Lot49 level, or close. But that doesn't mean it's nearly his "best". You don't have a single character in that early stuff that can really match even a pointsman, much less a zoyd.

― s.clover, Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Okay, peace. I agree it certainly doesn't stand on its own as a towering work of fiction, and I sympathize with the yearly crop of college sophomores who encounter it in the context of "this guy is a really big deal." tbh I rarely think of it as a standalone work. more a warm-up lap and primer for GR.

That said, the claim that Pynchon has published anything less worthwhile than Inherent Vice seems pretty idiosyncratic. Unless I missed a panel at the True Headz 2012 convention.

i guess i'll give IV another shot. i read it when it came out and it seemed pretty lame.

harold bloom sez lot 49 is one of the 4-5 best modern american novels!

harold bloom says a lot of insane shit

hates women f. ex. iirc

harold bloom needs cred to make his canon-mongering seem like it's in touch with life, also loves gnosticism and complicated symbolic structures and complicated filial relationships to tradition. so.

or maybe he just likes the book

always that possibility, yup

i just bear him ill will. for no good reason. or for the pleasure of it.

As far as IV, there's not deep kurious korrespondances going on, but I find that a relief. I think the writing just as such is just very high quality and mature, and I find a lot of resonance and connection with the themes, which feel very developed. AtD and IV are two very good brackets w/r/t to Pynchon's vision of the 20th century and the radical tradition, like whence it springs and the big scooby mystery of where it went. They're both very heartfelt.

j. -- yeah, that triangle was the one part that i thought really dragged, but i've seen enough people say they enjoyed it to figure i'm still missing something essential. When it was about anything in europe except the triangle itself, I found it pretty enjoyable just in terms of setting a broad intellectual and political context. I've got a copy of A Rebours that I intend to finish before I tackle that section again, since I've heard it helps situate that section. There's probably a bunch of other various genre stuff I'm not familiar with that would also help it "click".