OT: Anathem

Solomon, Joshua · 16 Sep 2008, 21:50 · from 2008-September.txt.gz

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From: J.A.Solomon at city.ac.uk (Solomon, Joshua)
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:50:43 +0100
Subject: (urth) OT: Anathem
In-Reply-To: <mailman.1.1221599406.25874.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID: <C4F5E8C3.22538%J.A.Solomon at city.ac.uk>

> Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:40:29 -0700
> From: James Crossley <ishmael at drizzle.com>
> 
> On 9/15/08 9:33 PM, "Adam Thornton" <adam at io.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Speaking of which: how many other hard-core Pynchon fans are there here?
>> 
> I'm one.  And I've liked Stephenson in the past because of his Pynchon-lite
> qualities,

Agreed, James.  I've read all of Pynchon's published fiction and most of
Stephenson's. I am indeed a serious Pynchon fan and a less-serious
Stephenson fan. IMO Rainbow is the former's masterpiece and Cryptonomicon is
the latter's, but even the latter is lite compared to most Pynchon. The
Baroque Cycle was a slog. Were it not for the wonderful local (London)
colour, I never would have stuck with it. An earlier post echoed my problem
with it: long sections seem too much like textbook history. Pynchon was
never dry like that (although parts of his last two books were a bit of a
slog too...nonetheless, on the whole, I strongly recommend Against The Day).
veering back on topic for a second, am I the only one who frequently finds
post-New-Sun Wolfe novels a bit of a slog? (His short fiction never bores
me.) Probably the hardest for me to finish was Wizard Knight. I did finish
it, but found myself unable to care about Able at all. Even though he is
very similar, I found Chris the pirate to be much more interesting. I think
because of the large dichotomy between what he did and how he viewed
himself. 
bee
-- 
Joshua A. Solomon
http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~solomon

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