<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 9:37 PM, Allan Anderson <<a href="mailto:rubel@goosemoon.org">rubel@goosemoon.org</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I'd also love to get into some book-puzzle talk with some fans of both Wolfe and<br>
Pynchon.</blockquote><div><br>I would certainly be up for some Pynchon discussion at a future date, but so far I've "only" read Against the Day, and I gather a proper Pynchon discussion needs to discuss The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. <br>
<br>I did very much like Against the Day (One kind of has to, to read a book that runs almost 1100 pages in hardback), but there was so much going on in there that was over my head. Of course, some of that is just Pynchon's perversity - he's not the sort of writer where every word counts for something, and sometimes he just wants to make obscure or dirty jokes. Still, I found parts of the book extremely moving, and I don't think I've read anything funnier than this one scene involving a dog... I literally laughed for five minutes straight.<br>
<br>It would be interesting to see what kind of overlap there is between Wolfe fans and Pynchon fans. Both can be difficult, but I think Wolfe is more consistently entertaining, though that's hardly the only way to judge literature. Still, Against the Day "drags" much more than The Book of the New Sun, which is of similar length. And of course the politics of Wolfe and Pynchon would be more or less diametrically opposed...<br>
<br>-Matt<br> </div></div><br>