Gentian Violet
Thomas Pynchon defends Ian McEwan’s use of details from a war-time memoir in his novel. I like the fact that Pynchon’s argument rests not so much on the indispensability of borrowing, and the use of the acknowledgments page by a writer for the purpose of recording such debt, but on what one might call bio-aesthetics. For more details or to see the letter in larger type, go here. Via Maud Newton.
(BTW: re the phrase used by McEwan from the diary: “dabs gentian violet on ringworm.” “Gentian violet” is a noun–and refers to a dye derived from rosaniline, used in chemistry as an indicator and in medicine as a fungicide, bactericide, anthelmintic, and in the treatment of burns.)
The whole thing, far as I’m concerned, is just another vulgar exercise in persection. It’s everywhere in the society now: people want to see the famous dragged through mud. It’s especially irritating when it’s against accomplished and creative people who, as Pynchon suggests, we should be thanking instead of scolding.
Or, if we really want to scold, we can do it the Banville way, and demolish the novel on aesthetic grounds.
No doubt some genius will soon show that Heaney has a three-word sequence that also occurs in a Wordsworth poem. Bah!
Comment by Teju — December 7, 2006 @ 9:26 am