Rumination

[Thomas N. Dennis]

Reading the list's comments lately, and recalling some problems I've had =
when writing about Pynchon's work, I have begun to dwell somewhat upon =
the nature of my own affinity for Pynchon--for his decision (surely not =
a quickly thought-out thing, something one would decide lightly) to =
remain unbiographical as well as his work. I have come across some =
specious conclusions, culled from 22 years, but first will note that I =
first came across TRP through another writer friend who told me I should =
read GR. This was in (perhaps) 1974, and I recall many nights reading =
and re-reading and tossing the book aside--thwack! against the walls of =
the tiny apartments I then inhabited--I gave up and came back and kept =
on and finished and re-read.... Carried the book hitch-hiking; slept =
with it, you know, tried to turn other folks on to it as if it were a =
literary drug, you understand me? Nobody I've given GR to has managed to =
read it, and I gave up quickly on Vineland, too. So it is a joy one =
carries quite surreptitiously, quite singularly. Many, I found, had read =
about TRP--so much so that they presumed, as such didacts will, that =
they knew how to slip his ouvre into a suitable genre.=20
What I have found that I genuinely treasure--that would make me take the =
book with me (as that reviewer said so exultantly on the back of my =
first copy) to a desert island, given a single choice--is above all the =
humor, the raucous, shit-eatin'  deviltry (of such as Roger and Bodine =
at the big supper--"key word's ketchup, right"), which is closely tied =
in with the music--breaking in always at just the right point, just when =
the long, convoluted but serious sentence/paragraph above come =
lilting/looping to an end...

Also--pardon me, I'll shut up soon--there is the sense of genuine =
compassion, the gratuitous empathy of  a human author back there behind =
all that kinky erudition. But it's not moralistic exhortation, some =
feel-good Cosmic Hubris he exudes at all, more a "here we are, foax, in =
this Pink Floyd situation of Us and Them, and here are the power =
coordinates... What we gonna do?"

Neil Dennis