Pynchon, Status Quo, Love on a desert island

[Andrew Clarke Walser]

	On Wednesday, 26 February 1997, Eric Alan Weinstein wrote:

 Perhaps, rather than proping something up, (Pynchon) disturbs something,
 or balances something else. Or maybe to see the action clearly, we
 might have to work through all these metaphors . . .

	Pynchon, of course, props and balance and disturbs all at once. 
Because I too consider GRAVITY'S RAINBOW worth taking to a desert island
-- or to the suburbs of Chicago, an equally desolate landscape -- I marvel
that others find it oppressive;  I wonder what blindness of my own makes
the book seem SIMPLY divine.
	Thanks, by the way, for your eloquent reply -- but I would expect
no less from a devotee of James Merrill.

				Andrew Walser
			University of Illinois-Chicago