[lit-ideas] Re: book nausea

Maybe your expectations were too high.  If you had picked up the book not
knowing the author, you might have thought it creative in a shabby chic
sort of way.   I'm still kind of reeling over the Al Gore movie.  I can't
imagine that anyone who has seen it can still doubt global warming is well
under way.  But they do, and most don't bother to even watch a 96 minute
movie to know what it is they're doubting.  



> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 11/27/2006 3:14:23 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] book nausea
>
> So I bought the new Thomas Pynchon book, _Against the Day_, 
> and expected something bright and interesting. Read the 
> first couple chapters -- sort of a late 19th century Hardy 
> Boys in a magic dirigible at the Chicago Exposition, then on 
> to the Tesla versus Edison stuff -- and felt disappointed. 
> The Sunday NYT Book Review came out with extravagant praise 
> for the novel, and I read the glowing review feeling that I 
> must be missing something and persisted for a few more 
> chapters.
>
> Last night I threw the book aside. Same old, same old. Half 
> digested history about Tesla (better covered in Paul 
> Auster's _Moon Palace_ or Paul O'Neill's nonfiction bio 
> _Prodigal Genius_) and loads of overly cutes Pynchonian 
> tropes. Bad rich people, good poor people. Plots to control 
> the direction of history. Tone-setting archaic words like 
> "absquatulate" when "run away" would do.
>
> Hak-patooey. Move over Irene. Curmudgeonland for me. It's 
> enough to make one give up literature.
>
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