Italian review summary

[Ya Sam]

I will try and summarise that article, although the outcome will be somewhat 
clumsy. It reads fine in Italian though. This article is not very detailed, 
but it does manage to sparkle an interest in Pynchon without giving away 
much of the plot.


AtD is very heavy and has something in common with a ‘superman’ Florentine 
steak (superomistica fiorentina): both should be consumed at home.

AtD, despite its amazing strangeness, is not that strange for people who 
know Pynchon’s work. We find everything what we expect to encounter in 
Pynchon: epic, science fiction, historical novel, western, thriller, comedy, 
adventure story, political novel, military novel etc. in pantagruelian 
quantity. The novel is an encyclopaedia.

The novel begins with a ‘mongolfiero’ (a nice word for a balloon) and the 
Chums of Chance at the Columbian Exposition. And then, goodbye plot… The 
field is invaded by hordes of mathematicians, magicians, inventors, 
anarchists etc. Nobody knows exactly what is going on.

The heart of the novel is the search for something authentic hidden beneath 
the surface of common existence, but what it is does not get revealed. 
Pynchon’s work develops obsessively as a study of absence and nostalgia.

The characters' wish to become invisible is a kind of capitulation, although 
it gives them, especially females, the illusion of freedom. Lake Traverse 
wants to become like wind, to enter the reign of the air. Pynchon wants to 
show us a difference between destruction and self-concealment.

Although the overall reception of the book was not benevolent, and many 
criticised it for being chaotic, obscure, humourless, etc., we have to admit 
that Pynchon reveals himself as a prose writer of unreachable beauty. 
Pynchon’s sentences possess grace, fluidity and exactness which we won’t 
find in any other author of so-called postmodernism.


http://www.ilgiornale.it/a.pic1?ID=147618&START=0

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