Authors! Authors!


Subject: Authors! Authors!
From: Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 27 1997 - 12:43:14 GMT


There's plenty to love about Milan Kundera. THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF
BEING totally blew me away. It ranks with THE CATCHER IN THE RYE as the
two most important books to me. Kundera is just so damn smart and
interesting and human I hardly know where to start. When I get done with
one of his books, I feel like I really *know* the characters -- inside
and out, more than with any other writer. And even if I don't agree with
everything they've done, I understand and care about them. He is also a
master of narrative technique, bringing in non-fictional material, moving
backward and forward in time, adding layers and layers of meaning to
every important event -- I just can't say enough about him. I haven't
read his latest yet (SLOWNESS, or something like that), but I'm looking
forward to it.

I also love Don DeLillo -- especially WHITE NOISE, which is one of my very
favorite books, although I've never been a yuppie and never will be. It's
really more about academia and trying to be a thoughtful person in a
society that doesn't really encourage that kind of thing. MAO II is also
very good (what I've read of it, anyway). LIBRA is kind of interesting if
you want an imaginative exploration of what Lee Harvey Oswald might have
been thinking, in DeLillo's inimitably cool, clear prose. I would also
recommend "The Angel Esmerelda," which was chosen for publication in BEST
AMERICAN STORIES (1995, I think), and a very short story he had in the
December '94 issue of HARPER'S. On a more frightening note, I heard a
rumor that DeLillo will soon publish a book which is longer than Pynchon's
MASON & DIXON and Wallace's INFINITE JEST *put together*! How the hell am
I ever going to catch up? BTW, I don't think he's as much of a hermit as
Salinger, but he consistently declines to do readings, interviews, or any
of the other public appearances normally associated with selling books.
Like Salinger, he believes the work should stand for itself.

I've read STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER, by Tom Robbins, and I found it very
entertaining, for the most part -- sometimes distractingly witty, like the
author was getting off on his own writing a little too much. Speaking of
getting off, I also had a hard time seeing the point in some of the sex
scenes, which often felt gratuitous to the point of approaching
pornography. Not that there's anything wrong with a little healthy porn
now and again -- I just didn't expect to see it in a work of literature
(but then, I haven't read any Pynchon yet, so maybe I'll have this feeling
about him too). He's an interesting read, though -- kind of like Kurt
Vonnegut only more wacky, without the dark threads of war and other
inhumanities that run through KV's work.

Lastly, I think it's true that the impact of "Hills Like White Elephants"
has a lot to do with the shock of this unmarried woman being pregnant.
It's not nearly as shocking now, but you have to remember that you
couldn't even say the word "pregnant" on television until sometime in the
sixties or seventies. The story has other merits as well, however: like
the visual association of the hills "like white elephants" with a pregnant
woman's body, and the pregnancy itself being a "white elephant" --
something nobody wants. Surely this story had an influence on Salinger,
e.g. "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes."

Jon



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