10. "RE: You know, I read the review of Pynchon's new one recently" In response to In response to 8 Thu Dec-07-06 10:07 PM by King_Friday
>and just shook my head. > >Powers is always compared to Pynchon, but I've never been able >to crack a Pynchon novel. >
From what I read about them in reviews Pynchon's books sound an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut/William Burroughs type stuff. That's not really what I'm into these days. . . when I was in high school I read a lot of Burroughs though. I still appreciate his sense of humor (he once said of the American Flag "Soak it in heroin and I'll suck on it". . . or something like that).
>I think that's a great choice for Roth. That's definitely my >favorite of his, and it's part of a trilogy, each book of >which relates to a decade, and each of which is narrated by >Zuckerman. American Pastoral is the 60s and liberal >activism.... I Married A Communist is the 50s and McCarthyism. > The Human Stain is the 90s and this neo-puritanism >exemplified by the Clinton impeachment.
I was a big fan of Sabbath's Theater. That one really captured something about America in the 90s I thought.
>And you've probably seen me say on here that I'm one of those >who doesn't love Confederacy of Dunces. I understand that >it's genius, I know that people think it's hysterically funny, >and I just found it vulgar and grim.
I see.
>But that's not to say >that you shouldn't read it. You should. Everyone should at >least try it, because the people who love it LOVE it. And it >would be a shame not to have read it if it were to turn out >that you were one of the people who love it.
Yeah. Who knows. . . maybe I'll like it, maybe I won't. I just feel like I ought to at least be familiar with it.
I also want to read William Kennedy's "Ironweed" and Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road". . . not that that one's especially new. But then it did come out in 1961 and not 1861.