The New Leader, which went under last year, has returned as a web-only publication. That's not to say, as you'll see here, that it's become a blog or a snappy website or some combination of the two. It's just a .pdf that looks like the magazine always has. This seems less like bringing the magazine back to life than like keeping its head alive in a jar, but what can you do. It's the words that count, right? And the January/February issue has plenty of those, including Brooke Allen's immensely gratifying reflection on Against the Day and The Castle in the Forest. (Allen is, I should point out, the theater critic for The New Criterion. She also has a new book you should buy.) She argues that, while many writers late in their careers become more vividly themselves, Pynchon and Mailer have just become caricatures of themselves. In Pynchon's case, it is length—the bloating of plot, the multiplication of characters—and Allen even answers a question I posed the other day.
Here I have a confession to make. In the 15 years or so I have spent reviewing books, I have often been asked whether I always read the whole book I am writing about. The answer is yes; always; every word. But with Against the Day I cried uncle, finally defeated by Pynchon’s relentless assault. Although I literally wept with boredom throughout Mason & Dixon, I read it all. In the case of Against the Day I simply gave up, with a sense of utter relief. Do I feel my confession disqualifies me from writing about the book? Not at all: I suffered through enough of it to see that further perusal would be unedifying. I am not tempted to work out its elliptical and elusive puzzles. I know any enlightenment achieved will not be of a general nature; it will simply be an insight into Pynchon’s mind, terra I am content to leave forever incognita.
Slow readers, and I'm one, will be in total sympathy, but that it's too long is hardly Allen's only complaint about Against the Day. Read the entire piece. Rarely do so many insights—of a general nature, at that—coalesce into one indispensable argument. If Pynchon could afford to tear away his veil of secrecy, even for a moment, I wonder how he'd answer it?
The when I read a weblog, I’m hoping which it doesnt disappoint me about this. Come on, man, Yes, it was my choice to read, but I personally thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is actually a handful of whining about something that you could fix when you werent too busy trying to find attention.
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