My take on TRP and difficulty...

[Shirley Lim]

I attacked GR as a lad of 14, and read it in the late hours of the night
when my parents assumed I was asleep. I had never encountered an author of
his level before, and had mostly stuck to sci-fi (but let's not start
*that* thread again..). I had read Col_49 previously, as well as V. I got
about half of Col49, and just about none of V., but there was obviously
something that kept me coming back...
	So, I slogged through all of GR in about a month, in stolen
half-hours and hours here and there. The little time each day devoted to
reading, as well as my half-awake state and my inexpirence all contributed
to my total lack of comprehension of any plot at all. But, the guy got his
hooks into my head anyway, or why would I have presisted? So, I stumbled
onto the whole internet TRP community (disunity?) and spent my next month
or so reading merely the selections from GR in Moulthroup's (sp?)
Hyperbola. After that, I took on GR again and it all clicked...
	I don't rilly know where I'm going except perhaps that it's
possible to not understand any of TRP at all and still feel irresistibly
drawn in. And it wasn't all the sex neither, in fact I still wince while
approaching the Pudding scene...
	Oh yeah, my other point. The "P-guy" is perhaps the only writer
who has ever affected my life in a complete way. Everything seems to
relate to GR in some way. I like to think of GR the way GR thinks of
Tchicharine (sp?), a giant macromolecule that bonds with everything else.
I'm a P-cabbalist, but not in the sense of finding *Everything* in GR, but
merely in finding GR in everything. That may be why I'm hooked: Pynch
integrates so nicely as part of my life. But hey, as you-know-who always
sez, the true initation never ends...

	Gershom Bazerman (from the wrong address and all too 
inarticulate.)