Pynchon's endings

[Daniel Harper]

On Thursday 08 March 2007 07:54, Monte Davis wrote:
> DH:
> >I believe understanding Pynchon is really a lifelong project....
>
> You bet. Like David Casseres, I envy you that first-time thrill.

I'm hoping that hanging out here will give me an outlet for my reading so that 
I can stop boring my fiancee to tears trying to talk generalities with her. 

> But 
> inevitably, just like us jaded old geezers, you'll begin to notice tiny
> flaws: the occasional infelicity of style, the unresolved metaphor, the
> verbal tic.
>
> Slowly, inexorably, it will dawn on you that -- contrary to first
> impressions that P is an omniscient deity -- he's merely one of the
> greatest novelists ever.
>
> Sad, really.

Heh. I read a lot of reviews of ATD while reading it, just to try to get a 
handle on the novel, and was astonished by the number of reviewers who openly 
admitted to either not reading it or not finishing it. I'd expect a little 
better of professional book reviewers. Even more astonishing, though, was 
reading some of them again after finishing the novel -- many of the 
complaints made against the book make absolutely no sense if you've actually 
completed it, as opposed to stopping about halfway through. 

The depths of Pynchon's knowledge and research abilities are astonishing. 
Quite aside from the quality of the writing, the sheer amount of "stuff" in 
ATD is quite worthy of respect and merits attention.

-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper