Thomas Pynchon exploits history for his own selfish ends

[Tim Strzechowski]

Forgive me if I've brought this up before, but ...

I have always been of the notion that as readers, we have to be "ready" to read a book ... ready in terms of our reading ability + our body of life experience.  It varies for all of us.  When I was about 23, I bought a copy of Ulysses and tried to read it ... couldn't do it, so it sat on my shelf for about a decade collecting dust ... In my early thirties, I again tried reading it and, lo and behold, it was a magnificent experience!  The same thing has happened at various points for me when reading GR ... when I first got my copy, I made about a dozen false starts over a few years, then it finally clicked ... I can't explain it, but my own reading experience has shown that one needs to be "ready" to read a book.

By the way, I'm still NOT ready to read all of Proust ...





> 
> Sometimes it's as simple as just not being in the proper frame of mind.
> A-and then again, as I said, sometimes a body just don't like a book.  It's
> only natural...


-------------- next part --------------
An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: "David Patty" <navan.ghee at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Thomas Pynchon exploits history for his own selfish ends
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:58:00 +0000
Size: 2320
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20080925/9908c42c/attachment-0001.mht>