Fwd: Amazing

[Daniel Harper]

(Forgot to send this to the P-list. Sorry.)

Sorry about the delay in my response.

On 5/10/07, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel Harper:
>
> >[...] after reading some two thousand pages, including
> >four-and-a-half novels, three short stories (saving the end of SL for
> after
> >I finish V.), and several essays and articles, I'm coming to finally be
> to
> >the point of actually being able to read Pynchon. It's an amazing feeling
> >[...]
> >
> >On the other hand, after I finish V. there's really only one more book to
> >go. Sure, I'll be rereading this stuff for my lifetime, and I'll
> definitely
> >be rereading ATD and joining in on ATDDTA after I finish GR, but the
> >prospect of being in some sense _done_, with no more to look forward to,
> is
> >slightly disheartening.
>
> But this is when the REAL pleasure starts!



Yeah, I actually re-read CL49 awhile back, and found much of what you say
below to be true.


I just finished reading GR for
> the tenth time (I timed it so I could finish on Pynchon's 70th birthday -
> the best homage I could think of), and it was at least as enjoyable as the
> first time. Even after several close readings I keep discovering new
> connections, new hidden nerve lines, in that novel (and while doing so, I
> forget others, which can then be rediscovered during a later rereading).
> When Slothrop in GR goes to Raoul's party, he finds a "giddy, shiftless
> crowd" connected by a "network [...] whose complexity his head's never
> quite
> been able to fit around" (GR, 244). Well even after several readings of
> all
> Pynchon's novels my head's never quite been able to fit around the
> complexity of them.



That's at least a bit heartening. I finished V. last night, getting ready to
start up on GR. Taking a short break first, though -- I've checked out _A
Confederacy of Dunces_ as a bit of a breather before tackling GR.

<snip GR passages>


So after finishing GR, you are in some sense *done* with Pynchon - but in
> another sense you're just beginning.


Pretty much what I figured. Still... to have nothing else that's _new_...
it's a bit depressing.

(As an aside, I was thinking today about how nice it would be to have a
series of YA novels about the Chums of Chance, in which on one level they
were simply-told short children's books, while on another they were
devastating satires of modern society. With the Evil Half-Wit as a recurring
villain....)
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