A Spider Blacker and More Venomous

[Circ Staff]

	I agree with Alan Westrope that most American literature of the past 
fifty years pales in comparison to GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.  One work that does 
hold its own, I think, is THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER, James 
Merrill's 560-page poem about physics and the dead (among other 
things).
	In RECITATIVE, a collection of his prose, Merrill says that, while
he and Pynchon have spun similar webs, the center of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is
a spider blacker and more venomous than SANDOVER's. 
	
			Andrew Walser
			Arlington Heights, IL