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From: krantz@csd2.UUCP (Michaelntz)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Thomas Pynchon (really William Gaddis)
Message-ID: <2660018@csd2.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Mar-86 13:25:00 EST
Article-I.D.: csd2.2660018
Posted: Tue Mar 11 13:25:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 06:28:09 EST
References: <1746@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
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/* csd2:net.books / mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) /  5:25 pm  Feb 27, 1986 */
In article <947@h-sc1.UUCP> wilson_3@h-sc1.UUCP (bradford wilson) writes:
>
>           Bravo! "Gravity's Rainbow" is one of the more significant works
>of 20th century literature (and will eventually be reecognized as such).
>What makes Pynchon more sophisticated than Vonnegut is both his style, esp.
>use of tense and person, and the wide range of material he draws upon
>to form his literary-imagery melange.


Certainly Pynchon is much more accomplished than Vonnegut, but that's
not really the relevant comparison.  The style, organization, and tone
that Pynchon seemed to have created for his _V._ seem a less impressive
achievement after you discover that he could have learned most of it from
a book published a few years earlier, _The Recognitions_ by William Gaddis,
the most important American novelist of this half of our century.  (GulP! at
that unhedged claim.)  With two huge masterpieces and a respectable minor
work, he has a serious cliam to that accolade.  
	Coincidentally, that's almost the count for Pynchon (you'd have to
add the stories in _Slow Learner_), but of course you don't tally things
up that way.  What matters is the quality of the individual works, and I
suggest that _The Recognitions_ is IT among American novels of this century,
i.e. yes, right there with or past the best of Faulkner, Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Pynchon if you insist, etc.
	Gaddis has the complexity and playfulness of Pynchon, and the
audacity of the more obvious experimentalists, but also an important
underlying seriousness Pynchon largely lacks.  The heat-death of the
universe -- what a stupid thing to worry about when you get right down
to it.  Sex, art, and religion -- now those are important things to worry
about.
	I acknowledge that to count _JR_ as an additional masterpiece, you
have to give it my slightly nonstandard reading.  Most people read it as
a sour satire on the world of business, and as such a pretty good one of
its kind, but not a first-rank book overall.  In my reading, we shift the
focus from JR himself to the three main adult characters, and you get
a rather deep munching on problems of responsibility.  Also some remarkable
technical innovations.  (To get this reading you have to discount the
title a bit, but so what?)
	The advice people have been offerring here--get started on
Pynchon with his short novel, _The Crying of Lot 49_--does not really
carry over for Gaddis.  His recent short novel (well, it's 261 pages,
so short only by comparison) _Carpenter's Gothic_ is probably hard to
take.  Let _JR_ give you a tutorial on how to read Gaddis's indirect
narration.
	Further advice: when you read _The Recognitions_, don't be put off
by the density of the prose in the first 50 pages or so.  Things get
clearer pretty soon; and in fact if you return to that opening after finishing
the book, you'll see that it's actually fairly easy to follow (now that you
know what's supposed to be going on).
-- 

            -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago 
               ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar
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