M&D thoughts -- no spoiler

[Paul Murphy]

I managed to finish reading M&D yesterday evening and can think of little
to say at this point, my reactions still inchoate, my understanding still
provisional. I will say it is a great, beautiful work -- the concluding
pages as affecting as anything TRP has written. I look forward to the
discussion this marvellous book might engender ... I would be very
interested in seeing a Group Read develop as more of us have a chance to
work through it.

I am baffled by some of the negative reviews, particularly the Slate piece.
The critic (whose name escapes me) bellyaches at length about how 'no
normal human being can read it in 2 weeks' -- guess that makes me abnormal,
since I read it in 11 days, and I wasn't exactly racing. I had absolutely
no difficulty taking a few hours to read 70 pages, since I found it
enormously entertaining and continually stimulating; the rhythm of reading
M&D (or of reading any of TRP's works) is singular for me, in that it
constantly demands that I pause, reflect, re-read, turn back to an earlier
passage, or just linger in the sway of the language and of the fecundity of
TRP's imagination. The pleasure to be had from reading M&D is so much more
than mere academic interest, as some detractors argue ...

But I ramble ...

Cheers,
Paul