Zoyd

[Mark Kohut]

Once again into the breach. However ragged AtD might be internally, the whole Chums build-up to the beautiful, graceful end is fully coherent imho. 

Weber's ideas on the direction of modernity are embodied, among so much else, in the Chums' and their huge city in the sky, with wonderful thematic lines and, of course, that ending which ties the grace/spiritual/religious associations together sublimely. As well as P's whole take on History thru his oeuvre.



--- On Thu, 8/20/09, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Zoyd
> To: "Tore Rye Andersen" <torerye at hotmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, August 20, 2009, 5:37 AM
> > Slothrop, incidentally, remains
> my favourite of all Pynchon's characters.
> 
> Yeah, gotta love that Tyrone. For me, Zoyd comes close.
> 
> > Which is why it still seems so disturbing when
> Slothrop simply dissolves towards
> > the end....
> > The trick wouldn't have worked so well and the shock
> wouldn't
> > have been so great in AtD, which has nothing BUT
> supporting characters.
> >
> 
> Right. In fact, the reader of ATD experiences a sort of
> long drawn out
> version of that 'protagonist dissolution shock'. I kept
> waiting for
> things to coalesce and cohere and they never really did. I
> still love
> the book, still rate it a work of genius, but that
> incoherence was
> definitely not a plus-point.
>