Atdtda22: [43.2] A telltale fatality for the garish, 619

[Monte Davis]

And for those who like that kind of thing:

That same 1985 issue of Pynchon Notes has a short review by 25-year-old Ian
Rankin, who'd done a dissertation at Edinburgh on Pynchon's short stories.
He'd publish his own first book in 1986, and go on with the Inspector Rebus
series and others to become the best-selling (and arguably the best) mystery
writer in the UK.

W/r/t my previous post's (dubious) disticntion between reading and scholarly
puzzle solving: last fall, having forgotten whether the review had even been
accepted,  Rankin wrote:

"Pynchon's world of paranoia, conspiracies, and shadowy government agencies
is so persuasive that the fan begins to see signs and signifiers
everywhere... he was manna to us literature students. With his playfulness
(what Barthes would doubtless have called jouissance) and his codifying
tactics, he seemed the writer that deconstruction and its ilk had been
waiting for...

"All of which makes him seem worthy rather than readable. Yet his books are
romps and detective stories."

Who should know better?

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1950557,00.html