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who'd win in a fight: Borges, Pynchon, or Nabokov?
- Thread starter Novgrod
- Start date
Siddhartha
Lifer
Mike Tyson
I'm gonna slight Jorge and just rave about Vlad and Tommy boy.
Nabokov was a genius!! Speak, Memory is my personal favorite, a singular gem. For some reason, I just love that he hated Freudians. In his forwards, he would NEVER miss an opportunity to slam what he called the "Viennese Contingent", LOL!
It's also impressive beyond belief to me that, like Joseph Conrad, English was not this White Russian's first, or in his case even second language (like most educated Russians of his time, that would be French).
While I suspect that 100 years from now, Nabokov will outlast and outrank him, I, personally looooove Thomas Pynchon, especially his magnum opus, Gravity's Rainbow. Tyrone Slothrop, LOL, what a great name for a hero! I saw where you recommended The Crying of Lot 49, eh, to each his own.
While the 700 page sprawl of GR is often sloppy and disorganized, it gives Pynchon room for his million horsepower brain to repeatedly explode in dazzling verbal pyrotechnics. There are probably more than fifty places in that book where the man just catches fire and he just soars off on some mad tangent, his prose gone taut like the best of the best of the best of poetry, for two or three dense pages sometimes. It's f*cking awesome!!
When you're talking about heavy hitters in the English language, you have to include Samuel Beckett, IMHO. His play Waiting For Godot is seminal, to be sure, but my personal favorites are his earlier pre-war novels like Murphy, Malloy and Malone Dies, which were all written directly in English. Many folks don't know that Godot and all his later plays were written by him first in French, and then translated later by him into English. What an Irish git!!
My favorite anecdote about Beckett (possibly apocryphal) has him walking through the streets of Paris on a gorgeous Spring day. His friend says, "What a day! Makes you glad that you're alive, doesn't it?"
Beckett replies, "I wouldn't go that far."
Nabokov was a genius!! Speak, Memory is my personal favorite, a singular gem. For some reason, I just love that he hated Freudians. In his forwards, he would NEVER miss an opportunity to slam what he called the "Viennese Contingent", LOL!
It's also impressive beyond belief to me that, like Joseph Conrad, English was not this White Russian's first, or in his case even second language (like most educated Russians of his time, that would be French).
While I suspect that 100 years from now, Nabokov will outlast and outrank him, I, personally looooove Thomas Pynchon, especially his magnum opus, Gravity's Rainbow. Tyrone Slothrop, LOL, what a great name for a hero! I saw where you recommended The Crying of Lot 49, eh, to each his own.
While the 700 page sprawl of GR is often sloppy and disorganized, it gives Pynchon room for his million horsepower brain to repeatedly explode in dazzling verbal pyrotechnics. There are probably more than fifty places in that book where the man just catches fire and he just soars off on some mad tangent, his prose gone taut like the best of the best of the best of poetry, for two or three dense pages sometimes. It's f*cking awesome!!
When you're talking about heavy hitters in the English language, you have to include Samuel Beckett, IMHO. His play Waiting For Godot is seminal, to be sure, but my personal favorites are his earlier pre-war novels like Murphy, Malloy and Malone Dies, which were all written directly in English. Many folks don't know that Godot and all his later plays were written by him first in French, and then translated later by him into English. What an Irish git!!
My favorite anecdote about Beckett (possibly apocryphal) has him walking through the streets of Paris on a gorgeous Spring day. His friend says, "What a day! Makes you glad that you're alive, doesn't it?"
Beckett replies, "I wouldn't go that far."
Beckett is a little too macabre for my personal tastes, particularly Engame!
I don't know how much of Pynchon is cute-clever and how much is genunie genius. He might reach a point where it's easier to construct some witticisms than to deconstruct them. I think that Nabokov was perhaps the better author, but he seems less fun to read. Borges I think suffers a little from narcissism, but it's deserved.
I don't know how much of Pynchon is cute-clever and how much is genunie genius. He might reach a point where it's easier to construct some witticisms than to deconstruct them. I think that Nabokov was perhaps the better author, but he seems less fun to read. Borges I think suffers a little from narcissism, but it's deserved.
<< Beckett is a little too macabre for my personal tastes, particularly Engame! >>
Get and read his early novels, they're far more accessible! In one, the main protagonist has the ashes of his life long best friend, which he has been sworn to take some to some particularly beautiful and meaningful place (I forget where exactly) and disperse them in a simple but sacred ceremony. He ends up ditching them in a public lavatory after a few too many pints. You gotta love Beckett!!
I know what you mean about Endgame, though. Beckett kept parsing and refining his bleak but still outrageously humorous world view until all that was left was the bleakness and almost no motion, context, or even air. Too much for me in the end, too.
<< I don't know how much of Pynchon is cute-clever and how much is genunie genius. He might reach a point where it's easier to construct some witticisms than to deconstruct them. I think that Nabokov was perhaps the better author, but he seems less fun to read. Borges I think suffers a little from narcissism, but it's deserved. >>
Wow, I pretty much agree with you like, one, two, three! Let's go take Pelham! 😉
One of the truly fine highly literate story tellers of our time is John Barth, as in Giles Goat Boy or The Sot-Weed Factor. Highly recommended. Makes Michener look like the workman-like word carpenter that he was (not that there's anything wrong with that).
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