MMM / thanks! / NP TR and DFW

[David Casseres]

On 3/12/06, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, so my friend is trying to learn more about German culture, and is
> a WWII buff as well, so I told him, "you ought to read GR" and he says
> ok, I've heard that was good...
> and went out and bought a new copy (couldn't find one used, he said)
> -- "that was easy," I thought
> so we go bike riding today and afterwards chilling at his place, he
> says, "by the way, you might like this"
> and plops a copy of Infinite Jest down on the table
> it's got a bunch of footnotes about drugs, and some previous reader
> left a page of notepaper in it saying "I gave up at page 126"

Aarrgghh.  I started reading it and burned out a few hundred pages
into its thousands and thousands of fucking pages.  Reported this to
the list (this was years ago) and complained that although it was
brilliant, and funny, and scary, and full of wonderful gags that I
would die to have thought up myself, it simply had no nutritional
value whatsoever.  Gobble gobble, gobble, but still hungry.  Fuck it. 
And then someone on the list beat me up about it so I found read the
ENTIRE SEVEN MILLION FUCKING PAGES, only to reach the same fucking
conclusion all over again.

It just goes to show that one may be as brilliant as the day is long,
and still be fucking worthless.  It is what sets our man Pynchon apart
from legions of tireless and brilliant and fucking worthless
postmodern novelists, who may or may not be his followers, or his
rivals, or his cohort, or whateverthefuck they may seem to be. 
Pynchon, like the late postmodern bluesman John Fahey, has a
connection to some real substance that can move one and put meat on
one's ribs, above and beyond all the great finger-work.

OK, done ranting.