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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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