AtD--How Does it Fit/Great Global Novels

[Tore Rye Andersen]

I wholly agree that these preoccupations can be found in V. as well  (heck, 
they can also be found in Lot 49 and Vineland) but if we for a moment - just 
for the fun of it - try to speculate on the nature of the four novels in 
progress which Pynchon mentioned in a letter to Candida Donadio, it is 
obvious that V. wasn't part of them (the letter in which the four novels are 
mentioned is from April 1964).
My guess (which is nothing but a guess, of course) is that MD, GR, AtD and 
possibly 'The Japanese Insurance Adjustor' were conceived by Pynchon in the 
60'es as a sort of literary cycle covering more or less the history of the 
world. This cycle is of course in part a continuation of some of the ideas 
which preoccupied Pynchon in V. (and 'Under the Rose'), so in that sense V. 
is "part of the lineage", as you put in. Both MD, GR, and - I suspect - AtD 
seem purer in their focus on historical moments of transition, though, so I 
still regard V. as a sort of precursor to, rather than a proper part of the 
sequence of novels that I think of as Pynchon's Great Global Novel.


>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>To: Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>CC: richard.romeo at gmail.com
>Subject: RE: AtD--How Does it Fit/Great Global Novels
>Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 06:47:26 -0700 (PDT)
>
>V. is definitely part of this lineage, albeit perhaps
>not quite so surefootedly so.  Bodine, Weissmann.
>Modernism, colonialism.  See yr very own comments
>below ...
>
>--- Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think MD belongs together with V., GR, and AtD:
> > It does deal with America, true, but a third of the
> > novel deals with the rest of the world and with the
> > imperialistic impulse in general....
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com