doorstoppers

[Mark Kohut]

Wolfe might not have transcended his time with enough depth?


--- On Tue, 11/18/08, Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:

> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
> Subject: Re: doorstoppers
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 6:36 AM
> A more or less playful doorstopper race seemed to go on for
> decades:
> 
> The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) - 756 pages
> Gravity's Rainbow (1973)   - 760 pages
> LETTERS (1979)             - 772 pages
> Mason & Dixon (1997)       - 773 pages
> 
> If memory serves me right, Barth disses The Recognitions in
> passing in an essay of his, the ostensible reason being
> that
> a novel mustn't be more than 772 pages long...
> 
> But JB is a lesser writer than WG or TRP. Have any of you
> read LETTERS from beginning to end? I haven't, and
> it's
> unlikely that I ever will.
> 
> 
> Heikki
> 
> P.S. Does anyone read Thomas Wolfe's novels these days?
> Novels
> like the almost 1000-page-long Of Time and The River.
> Haven't
> read anything by him.