From today's San Francisco Chronicle

[Tim Strzechowski]

Not that we need to criticize criticism of criticism, but this is a cool passage:


"Modulating down the ages from the 18th century baroque of "Mason & Dixon" to the 1940s bebop of "Gravity's Rainbow" to "Vineland's" breathless Deadhead riffs, Pynchon's underlying verbal music stays ever recognizable, unique as a great reed player's embouchure. For the "Nineteen Eighty-Four" intro, Pynchon returns to his signature nonfiction voice: postdoctoral yet cheerfully sophomoric, sad yet undespairing, as expressive in its alternation of long notes with short as an SOS. It's an instrument tuned and retuned in more than 40 years of occasional essays, reviews and liner notes -- forming, incidentally, one of the great uncollected anthologies in American letters."


  From: Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com 

  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/05/03/DD302378.DTL&type=books


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