11.27.2006

I'm also reading Thos. Pynchon, as it happens. After spooky experience of watching PBS documentary on Nazi scientists & Wernher von Braun, thinking of Gravity's Rainbow (which I've never read), then, immediately after, seeing GR on shelf in hallway, opening book to find it starts with quote from Wernher von Braun... anyway, so I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow. Haven't read Pynchon before. (As commentators have noted, I am usually about 35 yrs behind the times.)

Curious to discover that one of Slothrop's subconscious trances re: "American race relations" (cf. around pp. 65-70) sound a lot like the "underground" scene with Bluejay and the railroad tunnel in Stubborn Grew. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Having sort of a schizoid reaction to the book (maybe I shouldn't be surprised). Intrigued by thick intricate fabric of history and pseudo-history, the "info", the obsessions, the jokes. & yet surprised to find myself sort of bored on the "sonic" level. These paratactic strings of phrases, each ending with suspension dot dot dots...... seems like Pynchon is very carefully channeling a triangulation of Joyce, Celine and Kerouac through his set-piece fuzzbox. The sentence structure is sort of repetitive, I think that's what is boring me. Maybe it's sposed to be that way, obsessive run-on paranoid etc. But that doesn't mean I is going to like it entirely. Oh well. I just started it.

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