New Pynchon Novel Title to be Revealed Within the Next Week

[David Casseres]

I think if I were required, on pain of death, to decide my preference
between Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, I'd have to settle for
death.  But I can say that while Gravity's Rainbow is the most
intellectually stimulating fiction I've ever read, it's Mason & Dixon
that occasionally moves me to tears as I read.

On 7/18/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I once told somebody that the only literary character
> I'd ever really "identified" with was Ignatius Reilly
> (Confederacy of Dunces, with Oedipa Maas coming in a
> close second, and then it's Beckett from tehre on out,
> so ...).  She was (justly) horrified.  Coincidentally
> (?), I saw her picture in the paper today (my God,
> people my age are OLD).  But I've taken to telling
> people that Mason & Dixon, despite 800+ pages of faux
> century prose et al., might well be Pynchon's most
> "accessible" book, precisely because people might
> actually "identify," or, at any rate, sympathize, with
> the characters.  Was never a concern of mine, but ...
>
> But I'd also note that Pynchon's Mason and Dixon are,
> ultimately, inevitably, even indisputably (fully
> expecting nonetheless, of course, a dispute) late
> twentieth century characters, just as any characters
> in any late twentieth century fiction are, whether
> they be   from a novel or a movie or a comic book or a
> teevee show or a play or a musical or a cartoon or an
> advertisement or ... historical, sci fi, horror,
> romance, Western, contemporary, what have you ....
>
> We, on the other hand, have ultimately, inevitably,
> even indisputably (fully expecting ...) gone from
> being twentieth to twenty-first century characters ...
>
> --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > I know I can "identify" with the characters in GR
> > better than with those in M&D....
>
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