NE Ohio - AtD Party!

[Paul Mackin]

On Nov 16, 2006, at 9:35 AM, Monte Davis wrote:

>> The only person I know personally who's read it is my freshman
>> year roommate (and she lives in CA).  Thus the p-list...
>
> Much as some reviewers' casual references to a Pynchon "cult" may  
> pain us,
> I see no reason to think our numbers are going to explode, or that  
> the many
> fine younger writers influenced by Pynchon add up to a new mainstream.
> There's uncomfortable truth in this bit from Gerald Howard's fine 2005
> essay:
>
> "I do worry, though, that Gravity's Rainbow may be turning into an
> undervisited monument. In a poll of sixteen assistants and  
> assistant editors
> under the age of thirty at my publishing company, a marvelously  
> well-read
> group, I discovered that only two of them had read the book and  
> only five
> had read any books at all by Pynchon. The comments from those who  
> had read
> Pynchon suggested that they found him slow going stylistically and  
> that his
> concerns were in general alien and irrelevant to them. This makes  
> sense.
> Pynchon is a pure product of the cold war and the arms race and the
> adversary culture that opposed them, whereas these young people  
> came of age
> after the fall of communism, in a time when technology is viewed as  
> the
> royal road to imaginative and personal freedom. In a very real  
> sense, then,
> Gravity's Rainbow is turning historical-an inevitable fate."
>
>
>  http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_05/pynchon.html
>
>
>

Like Laura I have ONE friend who liked Gravity's Rainbow. We suddenly  
discovered our mutuality about 15 years ago, which
prompted rereads and discussion. Then we read Steven Weisenberger's  
book to reinforce things. A few years later we shared a copy of  
Vineland.
He skipped M&D.

I think the reason paranoia and secret conspiracy theory now seem  
dated is that current conspiracies, such as the Bush administration,
are so transparent  What's to discover? For us readers, I mean.

Maybe the new book will revive interest.