Inspirations for the Chums of Chance

[Sterling Clover]

I'd be terribly interested in your (or others) sense of which  
passages felt in "older styles" and which more fresh, whether this  
was section-by-section, or moment by moment, etc. The Latewood and  
Golden Dawnish britishish stuff I found the toughest going, and so  
for that reason associate more with the stuff in V. I never really  
got into, altho this is also because I've reread V. least and longest  
ago. But I wasn't thinking in terms of actual prose structure at the  
time, so there may be some giveaways or at least great red-herrings  
there. I suppose in some ways those sections, so to speak, also felt  
the least, gentle? tender? sonically conjoined? something like that.

--S

On Jan 19, 2007, at 12:41 PM, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> "Am I the only one who thinks TRP may have worked on this novel much
> longer than 10 years?.....There was his early letter to his editor  
> speaking of
> three ambitious books....one of which was GR, we must presume......"
>
> You're not the only one. Tone shifts throughout "Against the Day"
> and it seems like many passages are written in Pynchon's
> older styles. I'm sure that the researches that went into V., COL49
> and GR figure heavily into AtD.
>
> While I have no doubt that "TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
> or The Naval Terror of the Seas" is the primary inspiration for
> the Chums of Chance, there's a touch of Harry Potter in there as well.