Webb Traverse

[bekah]

I  kind of agree with Daniel in that it seemed to me that in Mason & 
Dixon  Pynchon was having his characters attempt live within and 
further construct a 2- dimensional grid on earth,  life,  philosophy 
and so on.  It was the essence of the times,  I suppose,  but they 
ran into trouble west of the Mississippi (and that's where AtD picks 
up).

In Against the Day he is giving his characters a chance to live life 
outside the 2-D grid,  off the M&D  grid,  if you will.   Against the 
Day is about being blown away (in a variety of ways) into other 
dimensions as opposed to trying to map, delineate, define,  and 
circumscribe what we call the here and now.

Bekah

At 3:48 PM -0500 4/18/07, Daniel Harper wrote:
>On Wednesday 18 April 2007 15:11, you wrote:
>>  Daniel,
>>
>>    I am convinced, are you?, that ATD was being written while TRP was
>>  writing Mason & Dixon...he has many thematic referrals...
>>
>
>At the very least he designed the two to work together after-the-fact. I'd say
>it's likely that the two were at least originally conceived of as companion
>pieces, and that it was intended that many elements of M&D would only become
>truly clear after one has read ATD.