David Foster Wallace vs. Thomas Pynchon

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 :/

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".