Paul

Hi Pontalba That is a fair summary. Thanks for it. There are many Jewish Mother jokes and allusions among the characters, for example. None are very original. They are mainly stereotypical, which gets old fast IMO. Edit: In fairness, this book is about New York and this emphasis is no doubt intended to highlight one aspect of New York's multi-ethnic population. His humor in other books I have sampled is differently based as far as I remember, although some of it is also pretty "low.".

Julie, Frankie, Many thanks for your welcomes. It is good to be back and have people notice, although I think this particular thread will change only very slowly. In general I am reading lighter more interesting things these days - or so it seems. Pynchon was a duty because my impressions of him are so out of step with his many rabid fans. Now I have my own opinion of his writing.

Many thanks! So am I. It reminds me of reading I have been neglecting. It looks like I'm going to be finishing Bleeding Edge - finally! - so I'll put it up there as Not complete and then shift it to Completed when I do. It is the first Pynchon I have been able to complete after trying all of his novels and putting them down. So this milestone will finally make it to the list, even though it is not the most satisfying book I have ever read. Or maybe because it is not the most satisfying book I ever read. Stay tuned. Edit: It was a chore to finish, despite occasionally brilliant writing. Beautiful peaks, but many long dreary valleys.

Hi, All! Checking back in after long time gone. American Pastoral is definitely worth the read and I hope some here have gotten around to it. As for my own updates, I've only completed volumes 2 and 3 of Javier Marias' Your Face Tomorrow. Slow, but good. All of my other good intentions on the list, including even those marked "Started" or "In progress," remain unfinished. Oh everlasting shame! I continue reading, but even more continually getting diverted. Currently reading Bleeding Edge by Pynchon, not my favorite author up to now after many failed starts. So maybe I'll add him to the list when I complete.

Ethan, I really appreciate your kind and balanced responses. Elsewhere I have run into such personally disparaging flak from fans when I have posted views different from theirs, that now I just stay away. I will perhaps have my own love-hate relationship with Gravity's Rainbow when I try it, since my life (now retired) has been connected with the defense establishment in one way or another, and I can see no mercy in his characterizations. But my temperature doesn't rise as much anymore so perhaps it is finally safe for me to try it. Be interesting to read what a vehement outsider thinks, even if I think I have already heard most of it. I'm not sure that I personally would put it as strongly as Wallace, but Pynchon sure has chosen a particular vein to mine after his early (and different) Slow Learner. Still not up to 9-11 in Bleeding Edge, but it is coming -- now a few days into September and can't be many pages more. (Although, with Pynchon . . . ) Best regards for the Holidays if we don't post before then Paul

I cringe, before my wife responds. My ever loving, ever caring wonderful wife. I can see her thinking.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response re love-hate and Pynchon. You mention many features of his writing that excite responses in me, one way or the other. But first a bit of general history. He and I are almost the same age, give or take a few years, and we have seen the same modern history and have had many of the same experiences, even to the point of starting out life working in the aerospace industry long ago. From there we have gone separate ways and lived two lives, each with our own personalities and reactions to the same world and local events. One scholar I read suggested that Pynchon, through his series of novels, was writing nothing less than a counter-cultural history of the United States. Well, I have not generally resonated with the counter-cultural outlook in recent history, so I often feel that, whenever Pynchon pokes his plainly visible social-cultural-and-political attitudes in my eye, I am not so much part of his target audience, but am instead the actual target of his animosity in his writing. By now, I have heard so much stereotypical cant on the topics that any more is just boring and tiring (although not many readers comment on that aspect of his writing). Second, I have to say my reaction to his humor is only lukewarm. His smart-alecky tone and deliberate (stereotypical) ethnic touches, in particular, tend to leave me cold. His most recent pun: "One cannoli hope so" is clever, but gee whiz. /groan/. Switching to the positive side, I think he is truly imaginative and his narrative descriptions are amazingly accurate renditions of what his keenly perceptive eyes see in a scene or locale. His catalogues, when he isn't sporting around and writing parody, are beautiful lists of telling detail, all scrupulously accurate and relevant. His serious passages are the genuine factual article. I am a New Yorker and I have not seen better vignettes of the New York environment. So, high marks there. His characterizations strike me as so-so (or, perhaps better, as hit-or-miss) and the story telling in Bleeding Edge so far seems to me like one long comic strip of flat characters and snappy dialog. But the story does read along. He has been rumored for the Nobel Prize and I am curious to see how that works out. If not, I can see why not; if so, there are also substantial arguable reasons in favor. Lately, I have been on a Pynchon jag, with a view to understanding his attraction among his fans. I had tried all of his books, and could never get into any of them, but I am now finishing up his shorter writings: Slow Learner, Lot49, Vineland, Inherent Vice and, now half-way through, Bleeding Edge (where I eagerly look forward to seeing his writing skills applied to 9-11). Perhaps, one day, I'll be trying Gravity's Rainbow but, for the moment, I think I will have had enough. It seems we have areas of agreement and non-agreement, Ethan, naturally, but I sincerely appreciate seeing your views of his strong points. At least we seem to be reading the same author and I'll be reading with a different eye. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Best regards Paul 　 　 　 　

So long!

Hi Ethan, I've been enjoying your capsule descriptions of books very much (especially those I have already read), now that I am catching up after a long time away. It was the Pynchon, however, that really caught my eye -- so brief and so accurate. I've been reading Pynchon lately trying to come to terms with him and why that love-hate relationship is so emotional. Just now I'm half-way through Bleeding Edge and enjoying it in a medium way, neither loving nor hating it but at least following the story with an open mind. I was wondering why you think there is a love-hate split; I have certainly encountered it in discussions of earlier books of his, and I was wondering if you'd have any inclination to expand on your thought. Some people say he is THE author of our time. Paul

mrjhale, Hi, Sorry that you appear not to have enjoyed Lolita. Many people haven't, for some of the reasons already outlined above. However, your disagreements seems to be different from all others I have seen, so your posts seemed worthy of rereading. Unfortunately, or fortunately for you, you seem to have read far differently and wider than I have, so I have great difficulty following your allusions and fragmentary reactions, even if the disparaging tone of your posts comes through quite clearly. But please tell me one thing, since you raise the issue: Did you cry? You never mentioned in just so many words.

I'm joining the parade here for Asset. Three pages in, the tension is excruciating. So far, it brings back to mind the best of LeCarré and I hope it stays that way.

Well said, Charm! I totally agree. With every word and sentiment.

I'm glad to see a forum where positive and negative reactions can coexist peaceably. Congratulations! You are doing something right, especially considering the fervor with which some opinions are held!

Finally slotted in The Great Gatsby, for 1925 in the Roaring Twenties, my first Fitzgerald read. This Side of Paradise and Tender is the Night still remain on the list unread, but now I look forward to them. Don't know why it has taken me so long to get around to reading Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, I have bogged down in vol 2 of Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias. Just too slow, and I am going to need the help of the challenge list to drag me through. So I have added all three volumes for the 2000 decade, the first volume being already completed. Also in the category of "bogged down," Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent has bored me to a standstill. So it also goes on the list. I hope the listing helps. But, eager to get the current decade started, I just added David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet to the list. After enjoying Cloud Atlas so much, I can't imagine any difficulty buying and finishing this new novel of his, so perhaps it shouldn't be on my challenge list of books I have trouble getting around to. But I couldn't resist, not after seeing the NYT review just now. I'm hungry for the check mark in the new decade.

Excellent title for a book list!

Completed Elizabeth Costello by J.M.Coetzee. And also 2666 by Roberto Bolano, in case I hadn't mentioned. "Slow and steady" did it for both of them.

Nope, Ethan. I don't think you have oversold it -- quite the contrary. If you can find "aesthetic bliss" in the midst of a narratorial style as wandering, dense and involuted as Marias's, then that is something I really want to see also! So, no stopping now. Thanks

Page 6, Vol 2, and slowly moving forward, again, finally.

Oh-kay, Ethan! Here we go! Volume two is back down off the library shelf and into the reading pile. And, Pontalba, I hope to stay ahead of you, but if you read fast you might yet catch me, I hope not.

Ethan, your post is enough to get me to give Vol 2 another try. And, ah yes, that drop of blood. I have the feeling there may be a (gripping) story behind all the words we are reading, and eventually it will be made clear that we have been sleeping along while listening to what the narrator has been telling us. I can hope, can't I? There has to be a culprit in the series someplace, doesn't there?

Glad to see some activity for this series. I have all three volumes and have finished Vol 1. Considered as backdrop for what might come, I found it reasonably interesting but requiring patience to read. I immediately went on to Vol 2, but almost as quickly put it into my Deferred pile when it did not pick up on the obvious "hook" at the end of Vol 1 but, instead, continued with the diffuse and wandering style that characterized Vol 1, meaning many words for relatively little and slow plot development. However, if a few here are interested in reading and discussing the book as we go along, I'll join the crew. Mutual encouragement may be a good way for all of us to get all the way through the trilogy. But all is not bleak, because the person who recommended it said I would enjoy it, and I'm relying on that eventually coming true. Shall we?

Oops, Kylie, Just got back here. Got diverted from both Magister Ludi and checking the forum. As for stupid, I'm no stupider now than before he called my attention to it, so I don't mind too much. Everyone has their opinions and I'm still the me I have been happy with for quite a while now. So I'll stick with mine. Just swung by to add a Trollope for the 1880's -- the shortest Trollope I could find on the library shelf. Maybe I'll get to read it soon, famous last words though they may be. This is definitely proving to be a challenge list for the books I have the greatest trouble getting around to reading. There is always a new story attracting my attention and bumping everything else one step further down the pile. Wishing you and everyone else here a Very Happy New Year May you all read many books Paul

Kylie, Thanks for the link. I'm on p31 now and right in line with your reactions. But I too am caught and will follow it to the end, slowly but surely. His comments on us unenlightened pre-modern ones are vicious and hilarious at the same time.

Kylie and Libri Vermis, Yes and yes, that is the story, The full title page of my Bantam Edition shows Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) Hermann Hesse TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN DAS GLASPERLENSPIEGEL by Richard and Clare Wilson The reverse of the page says that Magister Ludi was recently published as The Glass Bead Game -- a Bantam book -- and was originally published in Germany under the title Das Glasperlenspiegel, copywright 1943. I have one of the multiple Bantam translated printings that began in 1970 (after a first Holt edition in 1969). Mine is the fifteenth printing - June 1986. So, yup, The Glass Bead Game has apparently been around in English for quite a while under one title or the other. Not bad for a game that I understand is not atually described in detail anywhere. Nevertheless, I am on page 9 now and completely intrigued by the writing and about where the story of those "moderns" and their ideas might lead. What were your reactions?

Just came across a copy of Hesse's Magister Ludi at the library and browsed the first few pages. Now I'm hooked and, since I have been curious about the Glass Bead Game that is featured in the book (without actually being described), I have added the book into the '40s. I'll look into Sweet Thursday, Sirinrob. Many thanks for the thought.