Against The Day

[grladams at teleport.com]

Hello,
Even though overall I like ATD, there are ways in which TRP's style is very
heavy and grates. I went through and started to count but then the number
was too high to matter -- One certain phase-- usually positioned at the end
of a description "almost as if." Ok so things can't just "be" they have to
be "almost." And the double refraction reference keeps coming up a lot, and
it's interesting to consider all the possibilities, like we did in a thread
a couple four weeks ago- but it has become a hobby horse, same with
singling up all the lines, couple three, the boffo names (I liked Lube
Carnal though..). I change my internal reading accent into a silly English
accent so that helps. I think that his hobby horses that he likes to ride
on seem tired, and they get in the way of the flow of a good read. 

Somewhere between the La Blanca and the Mescaline, Frank(?i think) and his
new anarchist friends are out on the range and someone's thinking back to
how sweet it would be to have an obscure brand name. Beer, they don't just
think of beer. The pure flow of reading kinks for a moment. There are a
million better examples of obscure references, even worse flow stoppers but
that one is handy.. I like it when there could be two meanings, such as the
chemistry reference on pp. 371-2 Thanks for the Grundy explanation I have
visited a place called Grundy so that reference always distracted me too.
So we are a very few number of readers that have made it to the end. And
even fewer will have looked up and discussed all the references. (is that
what waste means maybe?) 

So it's not reading a novel really-- but it's a novel experience. I've
participated in this experience so that a)I can play with my mind, the
sfumato thing b)there's familiar faces in my email each day c)pynchon's
philosophies have melded into mine so I hear, underneath all the
complicated writing, things that mean something personally to me. And the
way when we start out on a project or trip, there are yes, infinite
possibilities, which narrow down to the slip or quay where it all stops. I
love that metaphor, I'm wondering if we all wish like I do that we could
have a new departure, get out of the situation mankind has found itself in? 

When I'm about 60 years old, if all goes like it has, there will be 14
billion people on this earth. Are we arriving or can we depart again? Isn't
that what the fantasy of time travel is? Once some things get discovered,
we miss they way it was when we could get all flamed out wondering about
something. It sucked, for me, for example, when they dragged a colossal
squid out of the water to examine it. Bits of ludditisms, the electric
light replacing the gas light, the history that would lie underneath
shiftings of utilities and monopolies, the stuggle between workers and the
capitalist rulers-- but even that reaches full circle. 

I can see why for example, the Sabbath is holy, and it's revolutionary to
keep it that way, not that Pynchon says so, but because we have got to
remember the common denominators that keep us all human. Stripped of
technology, down to who we are, how we can get along. The people who can
read this novel are probably directly or indirectly inheritors of the
wealth that has allowed us to go to graduate school, use computers and
technology all day long especially with the list, so it is important for us
to read this, it's like a lesson. And when you are stuck on a train for 2
hours a day, ATD is able to be relished, a gift indeed,

Jill

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