Very nice on M & D....

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks Monte and all for nice responses. Our threads were getting threadbare.  

Two perspectives of mine.

 One, M & D was the hardest for me to read the first time. Perhaps, unlike the first
of my GR readings, I wanted to 'get' from M &D all I knew I was missing (from first GR read). After all, I was older and should know how to read better!. The language--all those CAPS!--- and the hidden shafts of (near?)-allegory............frustrated me a lot. 

Pynchon's other major historical novels are set when we had lost some/most of our humanity....our souls...one of his themes, we know.

I see M & D's warmth, full soulfulness, rounded characters as when, in America, we might last have had that possibility----(if we were not slaves
nor 'flatter' [in Forster's sense] women [characters].)  

Two masterpieces on opposite sides of the seesaw, so to speak----GR, and M & D----then

The crazy seesaw on steroids; multiple-seesaw ferris wheel configuration that is ATD...(this strained image is out-of-proportion but so am I) 

Mark



----- Original Message ----
From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, June 5, 2010 4:32:01 PM
Subject: RE: Very nice on M & D....

Mark Kohut points to:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-life
time-mason--dixon-by-thomas-pynchon-1990622.html

Very nice indeed. I'm too busy and old to put my shoulder to the Hinge of
the World and convince all those who matter that M&D is, absurdly, just that
25-years'-worth-of-TRP's- life-experience greater than the absurdly great
GR.

So I think I'll let time do it, with nudges from Marek Kohn -- that's not
your pseudonym, by chance? -- et al.

-Monte