Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Dear Ray,

There's this shelve of books that's staring at me, unfinished projects one and 
all. There's the entirety of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", new translations 
cooked up a few years ago. I'm gonna finish, I promise myself. But, but, but. 
There's Oakley Hall's "Warlock" staring at me, I go in about ten pages or so, 
then the book goes back on the shelf. There a nice hard-bound edition of James 
Joyce's Ulysses. I read it about 1982, found it excruciatingly boring. There's 
also a copy of Finnegans Wake, which I pop open frequently, always delighted by 
the wordplay, always exhausted after a paragraph or two. There's William T. 
Vollmann's "The Royal Family", where there's plenty of concepts I could get 
into, and sometimes the language is gorgeous, but, but, but. And there's a copy 
of William Gaddis "The Recognitions" that stubbornly stays closed, right next to 
a copy of T. C. Boyle's "Drop City". I'm finding, on account of the group read, 
that I'm spending a lot of time in all of Pynchon's books. Which is lovely, but 
swimming as i do in a sea of books, there's too many temptations in the world. 

My first pass at Gravity's Rainbow was exhilarating and confusing, kinda like 
adolescent sex. I really didn't know what happened, but it made me mad and 
scared and angry at the bomb all over again. I had no idea what had happened 
plot-wise, and that really didn't resolve until I picked up Weisenburger's GR
Companion. Thus my interest in this group read. Over time, the Occult threads
became the most interesting, and there is no lack of that in AtD. I can say that 
reading AtD changed my point of view as regards all of Pynchon's books. More
favorably in the cases of GR, M&D & VL., less so with V. (both juvenile and 
delinquent!). I'm seeing references to COL49 casually tossed about like they're
part of the furniture.

In any case, I'll bet a later (voluntary) reading will be more entertaining. 
And, as Jimmy Joyce sez:

         That's his little veiniality. And his unpeppeppediment. 
         He has novel ideas I know and he's a jarry queer 
         fish betimes, I grant you, and cantanberous, the 
         poisoner of his word, but lice and all and semicoloured 
         stainedglasses, I'm enormously full of that foreigner, 
         I'll say I am!

And I'm finding Our Beloved Author grows more interesting as time goes by.

Robin


Ray Easton:
On Tuesday, Jun 12, 2007, at 16:05 US/Central, 
robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> what is it that makes GR superior
> to AtD? I'll be more selective in my personal descriptors, honestly, I
> simply want to be illuminated. What is this great, uncrossable divide
> which you are describing?

I was *not* comparing AtD with GR.  That was The Fonz.  I expressed my 
disappointment with AtD, which is not at all that "it's not GR".

I started a long post to respond to your question, attempting to 
explain why I think GR is masterpiece on the scale of _Moby Dick_ or 
_Ulysses_, what I see as GR's place in the history of the novel... and 
blah, blah, blah... and blah, blah, blah... (including, of all things, 
a long discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas's views on the metaphysical 
nature of Angels).  I had great fun working on it, but I'm sure that it 
was largely incomprehensible to anyone but me, and, even worse, 
ultimately it bored me -- so I trashed it.

But since you ask I will indulge in one purely subjective comparison 
between these two novels.

Reading GR is for me an entirely absorbing, wildly intoxicating 
experience.  Not just when I first encountered it -- but still, all 
these years later, every time I begin it again.

Reading AtD was one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences I 
have had with a novel in a very long time.

This is *not* offered as a critique of AtD.  Most of the people I know 
find _Ulysses_ boring, and _Moby Dick_, and Shakespeare's Tragedies.  
It is clear to me that the fault in these cases is with the reader, not 
with the works.  And so the fault in the case of AtD may well be with 
this reader.  But it would be dishonest of me not also to add -- "but I 
very much doubt it".

Ray