2008 Woodie Awards
Pynchon: Poser or prolific writer?
Prosecution
Kevin Scahill
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Perspectives
If Tyler Durden from "Fight Club" had asked me which person, living or dead, I'd most want to fight, I would have had to seriously consider the American novelist and short story writer Thomas Pynchon. Two other likely candidates would be Ralph Waldo Emerson and Simon from American Idol, and, all things considered, I'd probably choose Emerson, but Pynchon still has it coming, and I'll tell you why. Because I can't fight him, I can only offer (Mark Twain-style) a very brief summary on what I feel are the "literary offenses" of Thomas Pynchon.
For starters, like a friend's professor once told him, criticizing someone does not mean that you assume that you are smarter than that person; you just assume that you are as smart as the person you're criticizing.
My criticism will deal primarily with Pynchon's novel "The Crying of Lot 49," but the first issue I take with Pynchon is his naming system that he uses in other works as well.
Basically, he names a lot of his characters like Bond girls. That is, it takes nothing to imagine that the guy who would use names like Mucho Maas, Pierce Inverarity, Genghis Cohen and Dr. Hilarius would also use names like Holly Goodhead, Mary Goodnight, Pussy Galore and Dr. Christmas Jones.
The danger with using such obviously artificial names is that it brings attention to the fact that the story is a story. John Gardner, the father of creative writing teachers (as it were), has claimed that fiction ought to be like a dream and that you generally shouldn't interrupt it or the dream will be over. Bringing attention to the form of fiction itself can be powerful, however, when the form itself is impressive.
The form of "Lot 49," however, is not impressive. Reduced to its basic elements, it is essentially a conventional detective story. Most of the novel is the main character's attempt to unravel a mystery as she finds several clues along the way and meets mysterious people until the final culmination at the end.
For starters, like a friend's professor once told him, criticizing someone does not mean that you assume that you are smarter than that person; you just assume that you are as smart as the person you're criticizing.
My criticism will deal primarily with Pynchon's novel "The Crying of Lot 49," but the first issue I take with Pynchon is his naming system that he uses in other works as well.
Basically, he names a lot of his characters like Bond girls. That is, it takes nothing to imagine that the guy who would use names like Mucho Maas, Pierce Inverarity, Genghis Cohen and Dr. Hilarius would also use names like Holly Goodhead, Mary Goodnight, Pussy Galore and Dr. Christmas Jones.
The danger with using such obviously artificial names is that it brings attention to the fact that the story is a story. John Gardner, the father of creative writing teachers (as it were), has claimed that fiction ought to be like a dream and that you generally shouldn't interrupt it or the dream will be over. Bringing attention to the form of fiction itself can be powerful, however, when the form itself is impressive.
The form of "Lot 49," however, is not impressive. Reduced to its basic elements, it is essentially a conventional detective story. Most of the novel is the main character's attempt to unravel a mystery as she finds several clues along the way and meets mysterious people until the final culmination at the end.
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michael lee bailey
posted 4/09/08 @ 9:59 PM CST
good things about making up names -
a) you avoid possible lawsuits, or even inflicting discomfiture
to people whose names you're using
b) John Gardner's advice about wanting to induce a dream-state
and doing nothing to jar the reader out of the spell (though Lord
knows Gardner's own plots have some odd developments)
may be good or not so much
(that's a meta-question)
- (though being able to tell the difference between fiction
and reality is one of the criteria of trust for many of us, and immersion
in a dream isn't the main thing I'm seeking in fiction)
but the mere fact of a character having a name I haven't encountered before
isn't gonna un-suspend my disbelief
-- I've met too many people with improbable names IRL
"reduced to its conventional elements, it is basically a
conventional detective story"
It is so _not_. (Continued…)
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