NYT Free Acess Week

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: "Monte Davis"

>As I said a few months ago, the reader's age is an inseparable part of a
>book's impact -- none of us can quite separate questions of quality and
>"importance" from who we were, and what we were ready to learn, when we 
>read
>it. Mason & Dixon seems to me an even more extraordinary book than GR,
>especially in its handling of narrative time and in that quintessentiially
>Pynchonian fluidity of of narrative voice, sliding in and of out of the
>characters' heads, in and out of mine. But it didn't roll over and pummel
>and reshape the 47-year-old me the way Ulysses did at 21 or GR at 23, and 
>--
>with mixed feelings -- I wonder if anything could.

Oh, definitely. Incidentally, I was also 23 upon my first encounter with GR 
(which was also my first encounter with Pynchon), but I've remained rolled 
over and pummeled by that novel ever since, to such an extent that M&D, 
extraordinary as it is, can't even begin to compare with the almost 
extraterrestrial achievement of GR. M&D is a remarkable technical 
achievement, and a deeply moving experience to boot, but the narrative voice 
of M&D simply doesn't have the same range as GR's voice. In his Book Forum 
essay on GR, Gerald Howard says that "It seems to me now that Pynchon's 
great achievement was to create a narrative voice that is supple enough to 
say and do anything." This seems to me to strike at the heart of GR, and I 
don't think that the same can be said of M&D. Pynchon's fantastic creation 
of an updated 18th century English is a pleasure to read, but in the end 
M&D's narrative voice puts some limitations on where Pynchon can go with it.
Oh boy, I-I can't wait to see how AtD's narrative voice will turn out, and 
where it'll take us. To Happyville, I hope....

_________________________________________________________________
Download din yndlingsmusik på MSN Music:  http://www.msn.dk/music  - det er 
nemt og billigt