Very P but all impressionistic.

Sat Apr 20 23:53:21 CDT 2019

I read GR first, and then again about six years later, and then twice more
during GRGRs here (ancient history).  IMHO GR is his stand out masterpiece.
Its writing is often poetry. Its facets are multitudinous. It wasn't until
I'd read NO Brown's Life Against Death that I saw its deeper meanings. All
his other works are great or not in varying degrees (VL still pisses me
off) but I like MD next and then ATD.  But V also holds a special place for
me.

David Morris

On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 9:04 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> I probably ought to give the Big 3 another stab.  Although I’d read  and
> enjoyed Vineland prior, my first read of the hefty tomes was GR - wasn’t
> too highly impressed but I saw the talent.
>
>  Next up was M&D which I loved from the gate.  AtD was last and I loved it
> the most. That said,  I went back and reread all three in different orders.
> Still -  AtD is the favorite,  M&D next and although GR has improved with
> my age (in my 70s now) is 3rd.  (It feels darker to me.)
>
> An excellent memory is having Thanksgiving weekend off work and all to
> myself (family away)  and curling up with M&D and a TV turkey dinner (plus
> other goodies like popcorn). That wondrous tome landed on my doorstep on
> Wednesday evening (pre-order from Amazon)  and I started in then.  I
> finished some time on Sunday, I believe.  Binge reading, but great.  (Yes,
> I did read it again - and again - 3x now.)
>
> I’ve read all of P's books and I've reread them all at leisure.  In later
> years I’ve even listened to a few and if you haven’t heard Dick Hill
> screaming some of those AtD lines you’re missing something extraordinary.
>
> Becky
>
>
> > On Apr 20, 2019, at 8:53 AM, Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I happen to be reading GR again on way to re-reading the Big 3. I read
> it in the early 90s for the first time without reading the first two. So I
> was lost and stopped when Tchitcherine was introduced. So through the years
> I’ve found it easier to get through. I should also note that reading GR in
> my 20s compared to now in my 50s has given me better insight into Pynchon
> and to me as a reader. A global death wish is cool but not when u got a lot
> of gray on your head. I’ve come down from the Pynchon pedestal if you will
> and now during the present read have come to accept there are passages I
> will never understand and don’t feel so bad about not getting still to this
> day.
> > But the novel itself has been the Holy Center (hehe) for me, Joyce and
> Gaddis prepared me well but Pynchon remains to this day the man not only
> via the literature but the many interesting people I’ve met along the way
> and hope to still.
> > M&D was my first new Pynchon novel and it may be my favorite due to
> that. It’s an older mans work and more relatable.
> > And I will take another crack at AtD which seems more relevant in the
> current messed up world we live in currently. It seems perfect reading for
> the Trump age.
> > I hadn’t felt like that before.
> > In the end I think it helps to lose the rose tinted glasses when it
> comes to
> > Pynchon’s writing. And I’m sure if we ever get to see behind the curtain
> there may be aspects of Pynchon which may make us feel uncomfortable (some
> of those letters, natch. Yikes!) as would be the case for any of us.
> >
> > rich
> >
> >> On Apr 20, 2019, at 7:33 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I think that is RIGHT ON, in my experience too, even, time-changed re
> >> 'reading' GR vs the others.
> >>
> >> M & D was very hard for me to read from the Get-go as well--stopped out
> on
> >> that as well.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 7:17 AM John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> It took me perhaps 8-10 years to read GR all the way through and the
> >>> whole time I still thought of Pynchon as my favourite novelist. I have
> >>> distinct memories of what I thought of GR before I'd finished it.
> >>> - There was a massive amount of context I wasn't getting, just because
> >>> I didn't have enough history (especially military history),
> >>> mid-century politics, American slang, and so on, and I felt I wasn't
> >>> erudite enough to get it
> >>> - I now think its mode is more poetry than prose, but at the time
> >>> seemed so radical I couldn't figure how to mentally parse it
> >>> - It seems so much bleaker and more nihilistic than anything else
> >>> Pynchon has written, and I think it's easy to forget that when you
> >>> come to a finer appreciation of the novel
> >>> And so while Against the Day and M&D might be superficially similar -
> >>> expansive, very peripatetic in a narrative sense, zany, full of
> >>> linguistic playfulness and generic subversion and historical
> >>> gear-changing - they're still very readable at the level of the
> >>> sentence (the latter is obviously mannered in an archaic way but still
> >>> pretty approachable). And they're not profoundly unsettling,
> >>> disturbing, graphic and hard to reconcile emotionally.
> >>> That's just my tuppence.
> >>>
> >>>> On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 8:49 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> I have just read a long twitter thread responding to the question
> >>>> Which is Thomas Pynchon's best novel?...(person was reading GR).
> >>>>
> >>>> 1) supposition: the twitter responders skew younger than most of the
> >>> Plist.
> >>>> 2) many of the plist have read most of TRP from GR on, as they were
> >>>> published
> >>>>
> >>>> 3) Surprising me, there were a lot of Against the Day answers. As well
> >>> as M
> >>>> & D answers
> >>>> and not an easy plurality for GR. ---and a putting GR into some kind
> of
> >>>> context--from "needs multiple readings" to what seems like
> >>>> you had to be there, so to speak.
> >>>>
> >>>> Just sayin'.
> >>>> --
> >>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>>
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>