David Foster Wallace vs. Thomas Pynchon

harold bloom needs cred to make his canon-mongering seem like it's in touch with life, also loves gnosticism and complicated symbolic structures and complicated filial relationships to tradition. so.

or maybe he just likes the book

always that possibility, yup

i just bear him ill will. for no good reason. or for the pleasure of it.

As far as IV, there's not deep kurious korrespondances going on, but I find that a relief. I think the writing just as such is just very high quality and mature, and I find a lot of resonance and connection with the themes, which feel very developed. AtD and IV are two very good brackets w/r/t to Pynchon's vision of the 20th century and the radical tradition, like whence it springs and the big scooby mystery of where it went. They're both very heartfelt.

j. -- yeah, that triangle was the one part that i thought really dragged, but i've seen enough people say they enjoyed it to figure i'm still missing something essential. When it was about anything in europe except the triangle itself, I found it pretty enjoyable just in terms of setting a broad intellectual and political context. I've got a copy of A Rebours that I intend to finish before I tackle that section again, since I've heard it helps situate that section. There's probably a bunch of other various genre stuff I'm not familiar with that would also help it "click".