Mindless Pleasures

[Marshall Joseph Armintor]

Hi.  This list has had very little going on since I've started subscribing a
few months ago...so i'll stir things up a bit.
i'm currently reading _Gravity's Rainbow_, for the first time, in a graduate
seminar devoted entirely to TP's novels.  Some of the problems of doing this
type of thing in a seminar is that 1) some have read it more than once and
2) we can't spend all our time on Gravity's Rainbow.  Well, actually, I think
five weeks is enough time to spend discussing anything that doesn't go into 
multiple volumes.  the biggest problem is 3) not only what does this book
MEAN (the question is a pointless one; you might as well ask what does Moby 
Dick mean) but at what level should this book be read?  I've read a bunch of 
the criticism on GR in Pynchon Notes, especially, and it seems that these
people don't really do anything else but pynchon - he's a cult figure, to be
sure.  What I'm really trying to say: what perpetuates discussion of _GR_?
Why are people interested in this book?  is it because the book presents a
satisfactory, crystalline Pychonian world-view? is it the attention and 
identification with detail?  Does it hit the reader with some kind of meaning 
with a capital M?  Is it just that it's funny?  Is it because of its 
telescopic (and microscopic as well) view of the history of brutality in this
century?  Is it because it can be read endlessly?  Is it because of the ornate
and lucid prose?  Seriously now.  I do like the book (the length is not a 
problem), by the way, but how does one deal with this (like it or not) one 
of a kind work?

Marshall Armintor
mojo at owlnet.rice.edu