ATD sex (WAS ATD verdict?)

[Ray Easton]

On Thursday, Dec 28, 2006, at 15:54 US/Central, Tim Strzechowski wrote:

> Maybe it's a sign of Pynchon's having matured as a writer.  His erotic 
> passages as a younger man gloried in the fleshly details, whereas now 
> sex is, well ... something other than mere sex.

I doubt this is what you intend, but the comments above seem to make 
sense only if one takes the view that the sex in Pynchon's earlier 
writings is "mere sex".

I don't think this is so.  And the sex in ATD seems to me to be not 
something more than mere sex, but something far less -- sex has become 
mere (and often empty and pat and predictable) symbol.  In this respect 
the complaints of some of the negative reviews that ATD is a parody of 
a Pynchon novel hit home.

Ray