GR and M&D -- a miniscule spoiler, maybe

[Vaska]

At 05:29 PM 5/21/97 -0400, Sherwood Harrison wrote:
[major axing]

>One thing I've come to notice as a major style difference between GR and
>M&D is that in the new book Pynchon seems to have given up those
>wonderful, strange and fascinating lists of _stuff_ that pepper GR.
>Anybody else notice this? I'm thinking of the passage describing the
>contents of Slothrop's desk at ACHTUNG, or (one of my favorite bits of
>Pynchon writing) a passage near the middle of the book that begins "The
>nations are on the move," and goes on to list the hundreds of, well,
>_things 'n' stuff_ is the best way to describe it, that is being lugged
>around WWII Europe by displaced refugees. 

I still find that passage one of the most moving in the whole of _GR_.  A
veritable catalogue of desolation.  

Re. _M&D_, though: does anyone else share the feeling that in some strange
way this novel is as close as Pynchon has come to something like a
declaration of love, for America?  I can't read those last lines as simply
ironic: the tone reminds me of what came up in that Lotion interview he did,
the bit about how sincerity and irony do not necessarily cancel each other
out.  

Vaska