More reviews

[Otto]

They don't like it over there in Texas, don't they?

"There is a lot of talk in Thomas Pynchon's new novel Against the Day.
It is 1,085 pages long, so there is a lot of everything else, too. But
it is the talk that indicates what is wrong with the book and why it
is so disappointing. (…) Since I have always thought, from the first
moments into it, that Gravity's Rainbow is one of the 20th century's
masterpieces (and that Mason & Dixon is very very good itself), I am
sad that Against the Day isn't one of the 21st century's early
benchmarks. And, of course, I am fearful I've been stupid about it and
missed the boat. But now, in retrospect, his first novel, V., seems
less than some of its parts, and Vineland, which has a lot of things
in common with Against the Day, has always been a real stinker. Even
Homer nods, they say, and Pynchon's gotten slack and sleepy here.
There may be some thrilling speculation in the math I do not
understand, but there's no terrible beauty, no fearful Rilkean awe,
not much that is really horrifying, no dread. Not much fun, either."

 By TERRENCE DOODY
>
> http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/4372349.html


2006/12/3, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>:
> Some of these might be the 'reprints' of earlier ones, but I wouldn't know.
> What I DO know that after finishing ATD I will immerse myself into all the
> reviews that will have been accumulated by then.
>
> Pynchon's characters chat their way through his novel's tedious, jerky plot
>
> By TERRENCE DOODY
>
> http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/books/reviews/4372349.html
>