AtD review: Roller coaster in the dark

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From Otto:

>http://www.signandsight.com/features/1158.html

As Robin already said, thanks for this link. As a Dane I'm really envious of 
the extensive and intelligent coverage AtD has received in Germany. In 
Denmark we've had one crummy review and one pre-publication feature (and I 
even had to write the latter myself), and that's it. Of course there are 
only five million people living in Denmark and one could hardly expect a 
coverage as extensive as the German one, but the lack of Danish interest in 
AtD has still been very disappointing. Ah well, what can you expect: we 
still haven't got translations of V. and GR, and it's highly doubtful 
whether AtD will ever be translated into Danish. At least I can be thankful 
that I still recall enough German from highschool to be able to enjoy the 
many links you post to the list (thanks also for that interview with David 
Foster Wallace - another unknown figure in Denmark: So far, one story of his 
has been translated into Danish, and one Danish article has been written 
about him, and I'm more or less guilty on both counts...)

Robin already had a couple of good comments on Denis Scheck's review. Allow 
me one more, on Scheck's concuding paragraph:

"But the most spectacular party piece of all in this novel whose groaning 
feast brings to mind a fantastical curiosity cabinet is Thomas Pynchon's 
tribute to the technological adventure literature of the turn of the 
twentieth century: the "Chums of Chance," five aeronauts on board the 
"Inconvenience". Pynchon grants them perhaps the loveliest happy end in 
modern literature. "They fly toward grace," is the last sentence of the 
novel. A flight no reader should miss."

I'm not sure that I would call the ending of AtD a happy one. I think it's 
much more ambiguous than that, and I'm not really sure what exactly the 
Chums are flying toward. They ascend into the third dimension, to be sure, 
but as we're told on p. 1083, this dimension is not only "an avenue of 
transcendence" but also a "means for delivering explosions", which becomes 
abundantly clear in the first sentence of GR (and throughout that novel). In 
other words, something *is* coming to part the sky on p. 1085 of AtD, but it 
might just as well be the screaming of a rocket as grace. So I really see 
the ending of AtD as leading directly to the beginning of GR, and I'm not 
sure I would call it "the loveliest happy end in modern literature."

Best,

Tore

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