No fawning P-cultie, I

[David Casseres]

Meg Larson sez

>I have read _GR_, more than once, and I disagree with the notion that it is
>"unreadable."

So do I!  When I realized that there were foax who thought it unreadable, 
I was amazed.

>When I finished the book--the only student out of 31 who did so--I was
>wiped out.  I know that may sound funny to some, but reading _GR_ was one
>of the most cognitively important "academic" endeavors I've ever let myself
>be a part of.

Another data point:  I read Gravity's Rainbow when it came out.  I was 
30-odd years old and had a BA in Literature that I wasn't using for 
anything at all.  I was not and never have been an academic (though I did 
spend 7 years getting that BA).  I had no access to any critical 
resources, and I read it all alone.  Then I read it again, a few weeks 
later.  Some of the time I was stoned.  I was newly in love and living in 
a crazy place with a lot of other people.  My life was full of other 
stuff, but boy did I read that book, and for not a goddamn thing other 
than the avalanche of riches that it gave me.  Reading it now for the 
third time I realize I missed an enormous amount of the content those 
first two times.  I'm still missing a lot of it, as I can easily tell by 
the things people bring up here that I never noticed at all.  I'll have 
to go back next and re-read V., which I read only once, when it came out, 
and under comparable circumstances although I was younger.  I will 
probably never get around to War and Peace or Don Quixote as a result of 
Pynchon giving me so much to do (though I'll also have to re-read 
Moby-Dick, and I'll have to read Dostoevsky).

Unreadable???  Ay por dios!  Lieber Gott!  Bodzhe moi!

Gee, I guess that's a "fan club" kind of thing to post -- too bad....



Cheers,
David