duntemann.wbst@XEROX.ARPA (08/21/84)
I see Peter's at it again; 'bout time for a balanced view... Long time ago a friend of mine sat on my chest until I promised to read GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. I read the first 24,268 pages or so (just kidding guys, it only FELT that long) and then gave up. Is GRAVITY'S RAINBOW literature? I guess so; says so on the label and all that. Is it a story? No. What it is is an inner core of clever notions embedded in a 15,000 kilometer-thick outer crust of self-indulgent, chaotic, goshwowaintiawordsmith verbal posturings. I happen to be a reactionary with respect to *Style* (note ASCII reverence marks) and I believe it should lurk in the dark spaces beneath the prose and bite you in the ass when you aren't looking. All through GR I felt myself getting hit so hard on the head with *Style* that my ears are still ringing. Pynchon was straining so hard for *Style* I thought he'd bust a hemmorhoid and bleed to death. There was a good novel knocking around in there somewhere. Written cleanly at about one third its current monumental length, the book just might have had something real to say about war and human foolishness. As it stands, I think it's terminally artsyfartsy and not worth the effort to find a gem every 300 pages. Send brickbats freight collect; they're too heavy for UPS. --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@xerox