ATD Vs MD

[Mark Kohut]

Yeah, David, Rich and a few others see much weakness in AtD (and some in
Vineland). I respect
such opinions from long-time Pynchon readers and lovers and keep trying to
see where they might be right.
Hey, every great writer has weaknesses, even Shakespeare and sublime Jane
in her six perfect novels, no? (illogic intended).

I WANT to judge every book I read *just right, *the Goldilocks way.
James Wood, Harold the Bloom ( is off the rose), Adam Kirsch--who,
unusually, misreads AtD as a moral failure-- out of haste maybe),
David and Rich and a few other Plisters find fault smartly.

But I just accept that I am too much of a fanboy; too much into loving
every word, scene, idea, metaphor, *ambiguity *for rich comic effect,
even flat characters---we've been here before and yet we love him for all
the books, including the one *no one ever (much) disses, GR,* for
symbolic, irreal characters, (except for M & D, of course, "endearing,
sympathetic" per Morris and per Michiko's opinion-leading way--character
and story, esp warmly 'human' characters. (I am not implying that these are
Morrris's reasons for his judgments).

I will repeat again one way I find---or make--virtually absolute coherence
out of Pynchon's art: in M & D, history still allowed fully human folk to
be; in P's treatment of modernity and later America in his other works, the
loss of a full self is a palpable theme, unforgettably embodied in the end
of V and in Slothrop's dissolution. And the Olde Europe characters and
events in AtD--before modernity-- still try for roundedness--and do
encircle it, imho.

So,I just play it all as it lays; loving elucidation and explication
and *trying
to feel* the complexity of P's ideas and themes more than an overarching
judgment.
I think AtD is as much about abstraction as it may be abstract. Very much.
Yet, the lyricism about THIS land, this earth, the light across the ranges
can still make one's
skin feel alive, I say. I read this one while doing and reading the wiki;
and while entering the Plist and every day of reading was like what the
neuroscientists have written about reading great literature--neuronal
fireworks. (I'll send that study around to any interested, but the
scientists even wrote that reading Jane Austen *touched*
*our senses, including touch! *We read with our hands, so to humorously
speak. )

I think the, yes unreal, compared to great realistic writers--which he
ain't, and we accept-- human interactions go beyond dichotomies. In fact,
Cyprian and
Yashmeen, etc. are set pieces attacking that very thing, I would say. In
one reading here, we annotated with some complex Jungian and Hillman
'psychology' in ways
of understanding.

Here's a curious opinion I've developed with rereadings: The Crying of Lot
49 is a perfect little masterpiece with huge and original meanings, yet, it
may be
the one of his that is most "polemical and abstract". I have fallen into
this belief by giving myself an answer to why Pynchon in mid-life dissed it
so totally.

Just sayin'....



On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 1:41 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> MG was endearing, sympathetic, but still strange and provoking.
>
> ATD was strangely polemic and abstract.  It's human interactions were
> unreal models of obtuse dichotomies.  I think Vineland is his worst example
> of that tendency.
>
> Just saying...
>
> David Morris
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>