Delillo, Pynchon, Eco, & Life Magazine Oct 1, 1951

Peter Giordano Peter.Giordano at williams.edu
Wed Sep 17 07:40:04 CDT 1997


I'm reading UNDERWORLD and enjoying it a lot and I've been pondering the
excitement of living in 1997 when two major works came out virtually back
to back - And I'm seeing a lot of ideas discovered in M&D given a different
riff in Delillo's book

I also had the luxury of trying an experiement suggested by Eco in his book
on the reader of historical fiction - Eco talks about the reader of THE
THREE MUSKETEERS - Most readers will read that book with great pleasure and
never know if it is historically accurate or not - But there is the reader
who will get out a map of Paris as it was in the time of the story and
trace the chartacters steps and discover that Dumas got his geography wrong
- Does that make it a worse book?  What I did after reading the first part
of UNDERWORLD was to get the Oct. 1, 1951 issue of LIFE (which plays a
major part in the narrative) - I can't begin to describe the pleasure of
seeing those ads and studying the painting Edgar decided to put in his
pocket - It was like having a deluxe illustrated edition of the novel

Peter Giordano
Williams College
Williamstown, MA





More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list