IVIV (2) Help!

[John Carvill]

> Tore :
>
> Even though there is obviously more to the novel than what appears at
> a first glance, I'd still say that this is clearly Pynchon's lightest
> novel so far. At the same time, I would have to say that the lightness
> seems to be a result of hard work. It reads to me like Pynchon has
> deliberately been trying to curb himself ...this time around, has deliberately
> been trying to do something other than what comes natural to him. We've

Absolutely. Now and then yuo can feel him almost goving in to an urge
to make it more 'Pynchon-like', to add the occassional flourish, etc.
But mostly he reins himself in.


> ...without, in other words, what Pynchon in his letter to
> Hollander calls "the heavy thotz and capitalized references and shit."
> Of course there are still heavy thotz in the novel, but they are not
> capitalized, they don't strut around on the stage in their heavy thotz-costume.
>

He he. ALthough some thotz do take their time crossing, truning back
and winking as they go...

> It's interesting to consider that GR was published roughly 28 years after the
> action of the novel takes place, and it reads like a historical novel. IV was
> published 39 years after the plot is set, and it doesn't read like a historical
> novel at all. It reads more like a semi-autobiographical yarn of the kind
> old geezers are wont to tell. This particular old geezer tells it better
> than most, IMHO.

Yes, and one of the more surprising aspects of teh book, for me
anyway, was the feeling that it *is* a Sixties-based narrative (yes I
know it's set in 1970 but you know hwat I mean. You! Yes, you at the
back: stop sniggeirng), on the other hand it really doesn't feel all
that tethered to its ostensible period. Very hard to define, very hard
to pin down, and as I hope this paragraph amply demonstrates, very
hard to explain, but the feeling remains. It's apt, though, because
this book feels like Pynchon, yet it doesn't, feels like a memoir, yet
not quite, it's a noir pastiche, or is it, it's light but there's
plenty of substance, etc.