Wheat, chaff, stalks, seeds

[alice wellintown]

How do these conjectures account for _Against the Day_? Was the author
without age or wisdom when  he wrote and published his last Romance?
Also, if the novel is an imperfect form for conveying moral truths,
the Romance is, while by design less perfect than the imperfect novel,
a better form if one's objective is to convey the blackest truths in
the darkest heart of Man. So, with _AtD_, P's unloadings of layered
stuff doesn't break the reader-writer contract; we get what we
deserve, if not exactly what we expect. As far as a book that appeals
to a larger audience goes, it seems this is exactly what he tried to
do. Let us pray he never attempts this trick again; it's dangerous.
And, beside(s) the point to booot [sic].



On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Oct 25, 2009, at 1:25 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>>
>> Hey, I had a thought, Maybe Pynchon, now with the wisdom of age, has
>> concluded that it is really impossible to put a lot of moral relevance into
>> anything as imperfect as a novel,  so has this time out refrained from all
>> the deep layered stuff he normally unloads on us.
>>
>> He may still be just as good a writer (I think so anyway) as he ever was,
>> which Inherent Vice plainly demonstrates.
>
> Maybe he wanted a book that was accessible outside of the Academy [or cult].
>
>