Tim Ware on AtD

[Nathan D. Jerpe]

Maybe this isn't the right thread, but I've got to put my two cents in here 
for MD. It's the book that totally blew the roof off my melon. I've read 
each novel once, and I am sure I will reread MD before GR. Maybe it just had 
a warmer heartbeat to it, I dunno.

This is for the benefit of folks on the list that revere GR, but haven't 
gotten to MD. There's a chance you might find it even greater. I did.

Nathan

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Broderick" <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Tim Ware on AtD


> David Morris requests:
>
> I would like reviewers to let us know how they regard AtD relative to
> MD.
>
> So I ask:
>
> Why? I haven't read AtD, but is it somehow more deeply connected to MD 
> than any of Pynchon's other works (for the record, I am extremely dubious 
> of the theory that all of P's novels are part of one big novel)?  Why not 
> compare it to Lot 49 or GR (or Moby Dick or The Da Vinci Code, for that 
> matter)?  Or is it that MD is so bad that any comparison to it warrants 
> disgust?  Just curious.
>
> Then he asks:
>
> AtD is already said by
> some to be a more linear read, as was MD.  What, exactly would
> motivate an "again and again" reading.
>
> So I say:
>
> Yeah, more linear in the sense that there is something of an overarching 
> storyline to MD.  It begins with the framing tale of Rev. Cherrycoke's 
> storytelling and tells the story of the friendship of 2 men and ends with 
> their deaths.  But not linear in the sense that it leads where you 
> expected to, and certainly full of surprises and "non-linear" digressions.
>
> To my mind it certainly deserves a reread (And not merely because I didn't 
> give it the attention it deserved the first time around.  I'll get to it 
> sometime after AtD, I swear!), and for the record, I do have an ever 
> growing list of books that I want to reread (outside of TP, next on that 
> list is probably Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec), despite the fact 
> that I also have an endlessly growing list of things that I haven't read 
> that I want to.
>
> What motivates any "again and again" reading is the sense that there are 
> depths in the text that the reader has left unplumbed.  One may not think 
> that MD is the greatest work of literature ever to believe that. 
> Obviously, if you are thinking of rereading it, you must agree.
>
> -Chris
>
>
>