Another failure to read AtD

[Joseph T]

I really wonder how many of the reviewers who dismissed ATD for its   
juggling of story-lines,but praised GR actually read GR, which I  
found to be a much more challenging book than ATD. More difficult to  
keep track of the connections and interactions between the different  
story segments. There was a more intense directionality but it was  
also more subversive of the WW2 "good war"story and  
stranger ,darker , more directed toward our deepest fears, revulsions  
and idols.  I honestly think many reviewers have praised GR because  
it was so formidably reviewed rather than because they read,  
understood, and enjoyed it. Any other thoughts on this one.?

Further, I find the dismissive lack of seriousness among many  
reviewers of ATD to be missing the mark. I read much and have  
eclectic tastes but few books take on a deeply  evoked period of  
history, the science and mysticism of light and time,  the sad  
subjugation of an entire planet to the paradigm of control through  
war, and beauty of human resistance with such power,truthfulness,  
humor and skill.  The mystics tell us everything is connected ,  
Pynchon draws a diagram, a treasure map that reminds us where the  
secret waters come from, and where the skeletons are buried.

On Jan 26, 2007, at 5:12 PM, Ya Sam wrote:

> from
>
> http://blogs.timesunion.com/books/?p=84
>
>
> "By now all the initial hoopla surrounding Thomas Pynchon’s  
> “Against the Day” has died down, with the reviews coming in mostly  
> mixed. So I feel I can finally confess that even though I was among  
> those to receive an advanced readers copy, complete with my name  
> and the name of the Times Union imprinted in thick magic marker, I  
> gave up around Page 199.
>
> Giving up is not something that gives me pride, but when I realized  
> that I didn’t know who I was reading about or, really, what was  
> going on, and was searching my house for a really big piece of  
> paper to map out the family trees of the book’s characters, I  
> realized that the book had escaped me.
>
> I’ve enjoyed reading Pynchon before, including Gravity’s Rainbow,  
> The Crying of Lot 49 and, especially, Mason and Dixon, but I don’t  
> consider myself a huge fan of his work. I even gave up on Vineland.
>
> Basically, the book wasn’t leading me anywhere — just showing me  
> some rather clever and mildly humorous scenes, and connecting them  
> with long expositions that spanned who knows how much time (I’m  
> sure someone out there is busily trying to figure that out).
>
>
> I think Dostoyevsky once wrote (maybe in “The Idiot”?) about a  
> “leading idea” in fiction, and it seemed that was lacking in  
> “Against the Day.” I couldn’t even begin to trust the novel and its  
> narrators (well, maybe, the narrator of the Chums of Chance  
> sections) because I wasn’t convinced there was a clear direction  
> the novel was taking me. Not-knowingness, of course, is something  
> readers always deal with as they learn more and more about the  
> characters, places and events as they read. But they can often at  
> least glimpse or have an expectation of where the novel is heading  
> within the first fifth of a book.
>
> Part of the problem could be how rapidly the novel moves from one  
> scene to the next, not allowing breathing room for scenes or  
> characters to develop fully. I mean, I had to keep rereading the  
> opening Chums of Chance part to keep straight the characters.
>
> Part of my giving up also has to do with the letter included with  
> the review copy, written by Pynchon that said:
>
> If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor  
> adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main  
> purposes of fiction.
> Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
>
> Supposedly, Pynchon himself wrote this promo stuff, and that  
> “beware” and the “Good luck” were at once silly and off-putting;  
> his words were an unnecessary challenge, and a bit redundant once I  
> started reading and watched as an overabudance of characters  
> crammed the pages and entire periods of time got washed away in  
> overgeneralized prose." ...
>
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