does AtD rock?

[Daniel Harper]

I read ATD first. Not quite finished with GR. I saved GR for last
specifically because it was supposed to be P's best, and I'm glad I did so
-- it took me over two thousand pages of Pynchon reading (and about four
months) before I could really "get" the way Pynchon used language, before it
became even somewhat natural in my head. Pynchon writes like no one else,
and the primary challenge for a new reader is just being able to follow him
where he goes, and to accept that there are a lot of things you're simply
going to have to bull through and come back to later.

That said... GR is a much better book to me reading it now than when I read
the first few pages back in 1997 or so. Granted, I was only seventeen at the
time, and so was completely out of my depth to even attempt such a read, but
I think GR grabs the reader from the first in a way that no other Pynchon
novel does, and it never lets go.

I

On 7/10/07, Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I hope everything's fine now, Bekah.
>
> My first reading of GR not only blew my mind, but also showed how
> pathetic,
> ignorant and narrow-minded I was (maybe I'm still is, but Pynchon showed
> me
> some ways to improve myself). If simply becoming a Pynchon reader requires
> such an effort (I had read Ulysses before and thought so high of myself),
> then what does it take to write like Pynchon? I hope he didn't sell his
> soul
> to the Devil.
>
> BTW, there are folks around who first read AtD and then GR, so I think it
> would be interesting to learn about their opinion of GR after AtD and not
> the other way round. If I'm not mistaken, Mark is one of those.
>
>
>
> >
> >I only got around to reading GR a few years ago, when I was a
> middle-aged,
> >unemployed
> >pathetic failure with no illusions about anything.  Yes, it totally
> rocked,
> >blew my mind, etc.
> >ATD is good to read if you love Pynchon, but it's not the life-altering
> >experience that GR was.
> >
> >Laura
> >
>
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>


-- 
...the insanely, endlessly diddling play of a chemist whose molecules are
words...
--Daniel Harper
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