doorstoppers

[malignd at aol.com]

Of Time and the River, the 1000+ page continuation of the story of Eugene Gant, begun in the 700 or so page Look Homeward, Angel.  1700 pages of adolescent self-discovery.



You don't read this stuff before you're twenty, don't bother.


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.




-----Original Message-----
From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 6:36 am
Subject: Re: doorstoppers









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.



 




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