Pynchon in Peck Review

Paul Mackin paul.mackin at verizon.net
Fri Jul 26 10:08:17 CDT 2002


Monica Belevan wrote:

> I intended to laugh at Peck. I wanted to. I really, really tried. B-but...I
> fell asleep before.

Yeah, the Peck piece was unreadable, but was it wrong about the Moody book?  I
picked up a copy at my local Borders fully intending to buy it. But after
glancing through a few paragraphs I decided against.  In addition to the boring
old guilt trip being pursued, the writing was glaringly sloppy, sounding like
the  first draft of something.

But as to the Peck essay one couldn't help think it was some kind of joke
appearing  in the annual spoof number of  the venerable (but having seen better
days) TNR.  Looking through the mag's table of contents tended to bear out the
spoof theory--except that also included in the issue was the TNR's 1922 Wilson
review of Ulysses rerprinted, which review was a rave.  Peck had referred to
Ulysses as a diarhhea of words I believe.

What's the world coming to?

P.









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