I am a lifelong Pynchon fan

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Toby Levy wrote:
> 
> Ray,
> 
> At 08:17 PM 5/9/97 -0700, you wrote:
> 
> >toby, youare a wonderful person. thank you so much for the post. i came
> >here to find, in part, people like you who respect good writing and who
> >wish to stay on top of current discussion. i first read crying, fell
> >absolutely in love (despite the reader-hostile play exegesis), and
> >recently i read v, which really sunk the hook. this guy is definitely
> >one of the greats, and i feel forunate to be a sentient adult at the
> >time of his new publication. i have often fantasized about what it must
> >have been like to read a long-awaited new pynchon novel, and here i am!
> >i must admit that i read roughly half of vineland and put it down in
> >disgust (diversion, diversion! not mine, his!); also, i have not read
> >more than 100 pages of GR, 'the big one,' though my experience with m&d
> >(400 pages) has motivated me to take it on. i look forward to your
> >contribution to this intriguing discussion.
> 
> Thanks!  The trick to Pynchon is in the re-reading.  I thought Vineland was
> just barely ok the first time I read it and then liked it alot more when I
> read it a second time a few years ago.  I read Gravity's Rainbow rather
> quickly the first time through, not worrying about what I didnt understand,
> and then read it very slowly a second time and was awe-struck.  And for
> years I re-read V every year, always finding something new and wonderful in
> it with each re-reading.  This go-round though, I am breaking my own rule
> and reading M&D very slowly the first time through, looking everything up I
> can.  Even so, I am looking forwad more to the re-reading than the reading.
> 
> Toby
i've found so far that m&d is readable in a way that gr and v (to an
extent) are not. v took me a while to get used to, and i had to accept
that i would not catch everything the first time through. gr, on the
other hand, which i have not read through completely, seems to defy
thorough reading; it is a book to spend a lifetime considering. m&d is
more straightforward than anything outside of crying...49, which is in
itself a tough nut to crack, in terms of writerly intent (is it a joke?
a throw-out). m&d, as i have expressed, does throw one for a few loops,
but for the most part seems reader friendly (which is not to say that a
difficult text, or one that one finds difficult, is de facto unfriendly
to the reader), if taken on its own terms ie one must get into the flow
and language of the thing. a challenge, for sure, as with all of
pynchon's work, though we are, i am sure, better for the exercise.
ray