Tom's muse

[Craig Clark]

davemarc writes:

> I'd like to see a professor assign a book like CL49 to be read
> twice.  It's just complicated and confusing enough to puzzle most everybody
> the first time around while being considerably more accessible the second
> time around.  

My first introduction to Pynchon was through _CoL49_, a prescribed 
text for 2nd Year Eng Lit. In my honours year, _GR_ was supposed to 
be on the American Fiction syllabus but (as you may recall from a 
posting a few years back) was at that time still banned in South 
Africa. I had hoped that _V._ would be prescribed in its place, but 
we ended up opting for _CoL49_ instead. Given that most of the 
honours class had been with me in 2nd year, this amounted to giving 
us the task of re-reading the text. It was on this occasion that I 
fell utterly and head-over-heels in love with TRP's work (yeah, fan 
club time).

 
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"