Thomas Pynchon exploits history for his own selfish ends

[Dave Monroe]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Tim Strzechowski
<dedalus204 at comcast.net> wrote:

> 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 ...

I'm still not ready to ready any of Pynchon.  That's why I'm here, to
work on that ...