[Craig Clark]

Timothy Duff <timd at tatteredcover.com> writes:

> To the GRGR foax:  I picked up GR in '83-'84, on a high school assignment 
> to report on any 'great modern writer.'  I also had to read what the 
> critics were saying, and one particular opinion bugged me.  I can't 
> remember the critic's name, someone writing for Harpers, The New Yorker, 
> or some other such rag, but they characterized GR as "all the thoughts 
> running through a man's head between the impact of a rocket and the sound 
> of it's arrival."  You bet.  Is this a commonly held view?  Has anyone 
> else read this opinion elsewhere?  Set me straight...

It strikes me as a theory more clever than deomstrably supportable by 
the text. In any case, the novel clearly refers to events of WWII 
which happened after the last of the V-2s fell... Okay, so admittedly 
your critic doesn't specify V-2 rockets, but I still don't think 
there's a good argument for reducing GR this way.



Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"