This book is a collection of eight essays. The first seven are each written on the subject of one of the "deadly" sins of sloth, anger, lust, gluttony, pride, avarice and envy. The eight is on despair. Each of the famous authors ruminates on the sin, looking at it from his or her unique perspective.

Overall I found the essays well written, and the book to be easy to read. This book makes for some lightweight reading, short and simple, but without much substance. Overall, I don't recommend it.

Eight essays on Sloth, Anger, Lust, Gluttony, Pride, Avarice, Envy, and Despair (yes that's 8 sins). To be honest I bought it because of Pynchon, (whose essay -if you are even a slight fan- makes the buy worth it) but read on to the back cover. I quickly discovered that these authors compiled around the topic of sins is a great way to see inside these writers styles and appraoch to a similar idea. Some I'd read before, and others introduced themselves in this novel. All were unique and interesting in their own right, especially for someone -me- who isn't terribly interested in sins. Highly reccomended!

Only recommended to hardcore theorists and devoted Pynchonites (if those two titles can possibly coincide). Although I don't find the theory particuarly engaging, someone may.............this book is for you, but not me. Berressem is thorough in his evaluation, and the book isn't a difficult read. Overall, a mild recommendation.

This book, Pynchon's earliest published short story, puts on display the traits that will make Pynchon one of the finest English-language writers ever: a free-wheeling imagination; a catholic, encyclopaediac store of knowledge; a troubled morality; and a capacity to be damn funny.

If you've read _V_ or the short story "Entropy", you've seen this setup before: a college party and a protagonist operating within that system. There are very good reasons it was left out of _Slow Learner_: the humor is forced, the ideas aren't fully formed, and the whole thing is an exercise in imperfection. Which is not to say it's meritless -- the protagonist and the plot live in my brain still, two years since I first read it.

It can be found online, however, and even if it couldn't, thirty dollars is a bit steep for a piece like this. If you must get it, get all of his other published fiction first.

A depressingly predictable exercise in applying sub-sub-sub-Derridean critical methods to the novels of Thomas Pynchon. Pynchon, like the rocket that describes the arc of his most famous novel, deconstructs himself so explosively that it's hardly necessary for others to do it for him. The best writing about Pynchon has generally been starkly elucidatory in nature - these boys take Pynchon's already dizzyingly intricate web and dissolve it to a stupefying fog. No wonder it's out of print. Kind of fun, anyway, for the sheer shooting-oneself-in-the-foot futility of it all.