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Joseph T
brook7 at sover.net
Wed Dec 20 12:22:52 CST 2006
Hello all
I finished M&D a few weeks ago and finally ordered ATD. So trailing
behind everyone, but I wanted to read the whole body of Pynchon
novels before starting on ATD. I found M&D both utterly Pynchonian
and oddly different than other Pynchon work. I thought he could
have dropped a few chapters about a 3rd of the way through.The bulk,
however I found to be memorable, hilarious, sad and rich.
What I think I cannot fully give due credit for in Pynchon's take on
history is the transforming and lingering effect of having been to a
past world more real in its seeming anachronisms and dark corners
than any I have visited , though I also enjoy and have respect
for focused traditional realism like Tracy Chevalier's stores.( I
realize I'm not a proper pomo literateur) But returning to Pynchon,
this is a past as fully strange as the world is and must always be.
(This sense was enhanced by watching the eminently enjoyabe movie of
the book Longitude) There is something blessedly inexplicable in the
human imagination that allows an ancient Greek philosopher/logician
to imagine a world composed of elemental atoms. What is it? Ya got me.
I felt more love for all the characters than I normally do with
Pynchon but I know the philosophical and spiritual terrain he
describes in M&D pretty well.I am beginning to think the distinctions
of flat vs. rounded characters miss the mark. I sense that he
believes the idea of the dramatic novelistic inner life to be flawed,
that characters change directions but personalities change less and
are no more fully knowable than any other of the swirling currents of
time and chance, and that shallowness and surfaces are no less
mysterious than deep waters or hidden worlds, that conspiracies come
with our mothers milk and are as much a part of the inner as the
outer structures of the human experience .
The slow movement toward death is true to the era and effectively used.
Whether it is evident in these hasty and blunt sentences or not, I
feel that my reading was much enriched by participation on this list,
arguments just as much as the jokes, weird enthusiasms, and more
subtle discussions. Looking forward to ATD and the ATD pynchon list
talks. If anyone is needed to help host some of those chapters I
would be glad to give it a go.
Joseph T
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