contrapositive

DIVIDED TIMES Here's how Liesl Schillinger opens her 3200 word review of AGAINST THE DAY, which begins on the front page of tomorrow's Book Review:

In "Against the Day," his sixth, his funniest and arguably his most accessible novel, Thomas Pynchon doles out plenty of vertigo, just as he has for more than 40 years. But this time his fevered reveries and brilliant streams of words, his fantastical plots and encrypted references, are bound together by a clear message that others can unscramble without mental meltdown. Its import emerges only gradually, camouflaged by the sprawling absurdist jumble of themes that can only be described as Pynchonesque.

Here's the first sentence of Michiko Kakutani's take, which appeared in The Times on Monday:

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, "Against the Day," reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author's might have written on quaaludes.

Hmm.