David Foster Wallace vs. Thomas Pynchon

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

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".