eGad: Pynchon excerpt from new novel

[Paul Mackin]

On Aug 4, 2006, at 12:07 PM, Ya Sam wrote:

>>
>> ... but now imagine it's 1987 and you've been handed a
>> brief excerpt from the forthcoming M&D ...
>>
> Hmm. The style of M&D, which I have to admit is sustained  
> throughout the novel, is a different thing altogether. Pynchon  
> achieved a skilful recreation of the 18th century English literary  
> text. To tell the truth I recently got hooked to literature of that  
> period  and caught myself at the thought that what I was reading  
> was ripped off straight from M&D and The Sotweed-Factor. However,  
> if we're talking about an intentionally bad pulpish style, like  
> that of the excerpt, Pynchon has a tendency to segue from that kind  
> of writing into baroque verbose fugues, and back again. It's his  
> staple.
> I'm convinced it's impossible to make a notion about the whole  
> thing on the basis of such a short sample, and even with M&D, well,  
> it is not that homogenious. As to the why this particular excerpt  
> has been chosen, if it's not novel-within-a-novel, I can make  
> another, altogether heretical conjecture: It is the beginning of  
> the novel (please don't rush to stone me yet!)



Good thinking, Ya Sam. I don't necessarily believe you're correct,  
but you're focussing on the right question. Why was this particular  
passage chosen?




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