Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Tek) 9/26/83; site orca.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!orca!brucec From: brucec@orca.UUCP (Master of the Belvedere) Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Why pick on Pynchon? Message-ID: <1038@orca.UUCP> Date: Tue, 4-Sep-84 16:20:22 EDT Article-I.D.: orca.1038 Posted: Tue Sep 4 16:20:22 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 6-Sep-84 04:27:21 EDT References: <12874@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR Lines: 31 -------- >> It amazes me that a compartively skilled writer such as Pynchon can >> be slammed on this list while such crude authors as Piers Anthony, whom I >> find unreadable, pass unscathed. Agreed, Pynchon is a *skilled* writer, it's just that not all of us are willing to bull through all the extraneaous stuff he throws in to prove it. I generally liked "V" (even the South African garden party sequence, which did little to further anything else in the book), and I often wish that I had been able to get past page 100 in "Gravity's Rainbow." My tolerance for self-indulgent writing is just too low. We do agree about Piers Anthony. I have actually read several of his novels, and after each one I have asked myself why I bothered. The last straw was the "Planet of Tarot" series, which I read in a fit of boredom while on a long business trip. I actually emulated that old cliche of throwing the book across the room, shouting "Never again!" What irritates me is that he couldn't even get his research on the Tarot right. I could excuse his miserable writing and blatant sexism (he does know that women are human, doesn't he?) if he could just get *something* right. Bruce Cohen UUCP: ...!tektronix!orca!brucec CSNET: orca!brucec@tektronix ARPA: orca!brucec.tektronix@rand-relay USMail: M/S 61-183 Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 1000 Wilsonville, OR 97070