Is M&D as good as GR???

andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk
Fri Sep 12 10:09:00 CDT 1997


I think it's a stupid, pointless and irrelevant question. I'll note
that my (partial) reading of the published literature suggests that in
the early years academic criticism of GR was seriously sidetracked by
comparisons to V and TCOL49, attempts to find what people had already
seen and understood in the earlier novels. Much as I can see
connections between M&D and GR I also see big differences and these
suggest that comparison at such an early stage in the game is worse
than odious. I'll also note that it took me a long time to understand
what was good about GR and why it was so good and that such
understanding came after much reading and rereading. I did not expect
that M&D would be consumed at one sitting and current evidence
indicates that there are many things yet to be understood and enjoyed.

Keith's argument (somewhere in there amongst the disappointment and
complaints) was that Pynchon must have felt under pressure to come up
with something which compares with GR. Must he? How would one know?
Keith cites the length, lack of coherence and contrived nature of the
text as evidence. Funny, that's what they (They?) said about GR when
it came out, wasn't it?


Andrew Dinn
-----------
How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five



More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list