ATD verdict?

[Carvill John]

<<But you know, John: one can't make such a query without revealing one's 
own list: so out with your secret ranking! >>

I know, I know............. Well, I don't have time to get into a long 
discussion, or even 'rank' all of P's novels, but the top end of my list 
would be GR at number one (boringly predictable, but indisputably true), 
then either M&D or ATD, then it gets trickier. I mean, how do I compare 
Vineland with V., if I think the latter is 'superior' in purely literary 
terms, but *enjoy* the former far more?

I'm looking forward hugely to re-reading ATD, and only then will I really be 
able to start to 'rate' it, but yeah, at the minute I'd say it perhaps 
rivals M&D, and I reckon M&D was a true masterpiece. I know at least one 
p-lister (John Bailey, was it you?) said ATD "pissed all over Mason & Dixon" 
which seemed to me to be, as Jules Winnfield would have it, "a bold 
statement".

It'll be interesting to see how ATD comes to be regarded as teh passage of 
time reveals more of its hidden depths. Surely the really harsh early 
critics will be left looking kinda stoopid?

Cheers
JC

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