Apparently the National Book Awards were handed out this past week while we were distracted by the U2/R.E.M. controversy and Pynchon Fever (Catch It!)™. The fiction award was given to Richard Powers for his novel The Echo Maker. The non-fiction award was given to The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl the by Timothy Egan, which is about the Great American Dust Bowl (note: this book does not feature Rose of Sharon nor any other Joads). Other awards were handed out for some other stuff as well.

OK. Back to the Pynchon. I came across this appreciation of Pynchon today in The Guardian:

Pynchon came as a revelation. I was 20 when I worked my way through The Crying of Lot 49, V and Gravity’s Rainbow. The workload was punishing: I think a single week was dedicated to Pynchon (meaning a one-off lecture followed by a tutorial). But that tutorial was followed by a longer discussion in the nearby pub, where our enthusiastically bearded tutor was joined by a proselytising postgrad and a lecturer who specialised in the post-war British novel. The three put up a convincing case for Thomas Pynchon as the greatest novelist of his generation. Not that they needed to try too hard.

I highlight this section of the article so that I can contrast with my own experience. The author of the above piece had this learning experience at the University of Edinburgh. My own story comes from my undergrad years at a mid-sized institution widely known in the U.S. as the “University of Edinburgh of the South.” Anyway. One of the two literature courses that I took the last semester of my senior year (American Literature 1945- ) consisted of four students. Three of them are contributors to this blog (Elvismith, Weezie, and myself). The fourth student was a Burl Ives looking guy who was an eastern religion major or some such. (He constantly wanted to throw out hypotheses such as, “Do you think that Heller was trying to symbolize the Janist philosophy of the afterlife in this passage?” Our Professor: “No.”)

Our Professor was especially fond of three very specific literary buzz phrases: (1) the prevailing zeitgeist, (2) moral bankruptcy, and (3) castrated Christ figure. She could work those phrases into any discussion. I think she especially wanted to irritate the Burl Ives Buddha-boy. Our final exam consisted of essay questions on Catch-22, The Invisible Man, and Pynchon’s V. On the way to the exam, the non-Burl Ives students in the class resolved that we would each use each of the Prof’s catch phrases in an essay, in a single sentence. Comparing notes later, we each succeeded in our objective. Added bonus: each of us had accomplished the feat in a separate question. High fives!

Now go back and read The Guardian guy’s college experience. This is why I don’t write for The Guardian.