Bryant > Recent Status Updates

Finished Mondaugen’s Story. Really felt like the precursor to the psychedelic storytelling Pynchon would later use in Gravity’s Rainbow. Similar themes as well. He is such a master of depicting the horrors of the imperial impulse and how it utterly degrades the soul. Horrifying stuff

This is my first western novel. Admittedly I’m reading it because of Pynchon and Fariña’s love of this book. All of that said, I love it thus far. It’s “revisionist western history” as it is the Shootout at the O.K. Corral as filtered through the lens of McCarthyism. Not sure if this is indicative of other westerns but as a meditation on good vs. evil, it feels ahead of its time.