Letters to the Editor
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hmmm
I want to thank Laura Miller for her review. It brought me back to the time my friend and I read the same miserable paperback of V. on the night train to Prague. I tore off each chapter as I finished it and handed it to my friend to read.
Somehow that was the perfect book for the perfect moment and it all came together, the train, the customs officials with big guns and nervous faces, and the act of reading as destruction. I was so naive that I thought I'd really discovered something. The smartness made me feel like an insider, I felt like an initiate.
Gravity's Rainbow held me similarly spellbound with its equations and incredible length. (There's a book sure to start a conversation with the "right" person when plunked down on a table!)
I don't know whether it was Pynchon or I who petered out at the end of Mason & Dixon, but it was the end of an affair. I made it through and was glad I had done so but really, so long, it was great and all, but don't call me, I'll call you.
I am sad that this new book sounds like it didn't succeed, but I can't say it was unexpected. He always teetered on the edge of verbosity and obtuseness, but the trick was he pulled it off, albeit to lesser and lesser degrees.
I would love to see someone as bright and brilliant as Pynchon do something wonderful again, something concise (if that isn't too outrageous to ask) and clear that focuses his talent into one bright point. I look forward to reading that book, you know, the one the shadow Pynchon is working on as we speak.