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HATING PYNCHON

Sam Anderson, a reliable read over at New York magazine, is lately on a roll. Here he is reviewing "Inherent Vice", by Thomas Pynchon:

This is probably going to make me sound, yet again, like a Neanderthal shouting from the back of the classroom, and might even destroy my career and end a few friendships and scandalize my children and cast shame upon my ancestors—but I have something to confess. After years of deceiving myself and others (felonious head nods in grad seminars, forced cocktail-party chuckles), I have decided it’s time to stop living a literary-critical lie. There is no easy way to say this, so here it is. I hate Thomas Pynchon.

How very satisfying that is. My own wrestling with the man (Pynchon, that is) has more or less left me defeated. Reminds me of a story I heard about a chap whose struggle to finish the lugubrious "Gravity's Rainbow" lasted several years, from the beginning of his marriage on through a first child and then a divorce. Now that's dedication, or something. Also reminds me of one of my favourite headlines.

~ EMILY BOBROW