{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1871",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1871,
    "subject": "Pynchon (was: One last modernist yap)",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-10-27T19:54:21+00:00",
    "last": "1999-10-27T20:08:49+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0284@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jack Lyons",
        "address": "revjack at radix.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-27T20:08:49+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Pynchon (was: One last modernist yap)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Robert King wrote:\n\n:I found most of Mason & Dixon one of the most enjoyable\n:books I've read in the past couple years, although there's\n:this overly long middle section which seems to exist merely\n:so he can string along a series of bizarro vignettes that\n:don't add a lot to the whole. \n\nAt least one of those vignettes seems to exist solely so\nthat he can wrap it up with the ghastly \"Dutch ado about\nnothing\" comment from one of the protagonists. urk"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0290@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert King",
        "address": "bobking at gate.net"
      },
      "date": "1999-10-27T19:54:21+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Pynchon (was: One last modernist yap)",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0284@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I like him, but I'd agree Vineland wasn't one of his best (and neither was\nCrying of Lot 49, which seems to be the most commonly read of his books\nbecause it's the shortest). \n\nI found most of Mason & Dixon one of the most enjoyable books I've read in\nthe past couple years, although there's this overly long middle section\nwhich seems to exist merely so he can string along a series of bizarro\nvignettes that don't add a lot to the whole. But he also pulls this cool\nloop-the-loop with one episode called \"The Captive's Tale\" that comes out\nof nowhere, turns into a story that two of the characters are reading\noutside the presence of the book's major narrator, then wraps back into\nthe main narration (with it sometimes being hard to tell which one you're\nreading at the moment). It's hard to explain, but I found it a trick\nalmost worthy of Wolfe himself. Anyway, it's by far his most human and\nhumane book, I think.\n\nBack to the topic: I'd consider Pynchon intensely postmodern, though I\nprobably don't know enough to defend that opinion aggressively. But all of\nhis work has that air of \"everything's been done before, so I'm just going\nto throw all past and present genres and styles in the blender and have\nfun riffing off them,\" which is what I think of when I think of\npostmodernism. Modernism (Joyce being the keystone example) always struck\nme as a lot more rigorous. Didn't the modernists believe that they were\ndragging art into a more advanced era, with the postmodern era arriving\nwhen people finally decided that this progress was an illusion?\n\nAnyway, I'm speaking out way beyond my knowledge. Please feel free to\ncorrect me.\n\n-- Bob"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Alice Turner wrote:\nOh my, we forgot Pynchon. How could we? Some people even like him a lot, or\nclaim to. I thought -Vineland- was crap, but I don't think that counts. I\nguess DeLillo is a modernist too, at least sometimes.\n\nWell, I'm sort of astonished that there's so much interest in this subject,\nbut it's a kick, too. I mentioned -Catch-22-as \"pop modernism.\" I'd like to\nadd to that category the oeuvres of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick.\nVonnegut was an interesting writer, early on. He's become a lazy hack, and I\nthink it's great that he's announced his\n\"retirement,\" since I don't want to read any more of his books. Dick was a\nhack too, but I think he could be counted among the more interesting pop\nmodernists. I confess that I never could read much of him either. (One of\nthe conditions for joining the club seems to be relative unreadability.) His\npost-mortem elevation is certainly a phenomenon.\n\nAnd no, Alex, I don't want to discuss racism yet. First I have to defend my\ngeographical theories!\n\nOh, and Wombat, thanks for picking out the nugget of gold in my last leaden\nrant.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}