Comparative Lit

[Scott Allen]

I still think _V._ is Pynchon's best work.  It's as symbolically dense as
_GR_, as funny as _Lot 49_, and in many ways a more fully developed 
"character" novel then either.  Benny Profane is a lasting contribution to 
the world of American literary characters, in the same way as Ishmael and 
Gatsby have proven to connect with something deep and lasting in the 
American psyche.

It's hard to imagine that same status for Zoyd or Frenesi ... and yet there
are sections in that book which "nail" the America of the time.  The book
seems to me to be painting the 80s as projected from the 60s--to be in a
sense written in foresight rather than hindsight.  After all, choosing to
set it in 1984, 6 years before it was published, would seem to indicate he
wasn't interested in doing the contemporary schtick.  If read that way, 
then Bill Barf & the Vomitones is in fact perfect--not because it reeks
of verisimilitude, not because it sounds "real," but precisely because it
sounds false, but in a sixties-looking-ahead sort of way.  It is that 80s
I think Pynchon wanted to capture, a period he could place in juxtaposition
to the 60s.

BTW, is it general knowledge that Pynchon has "disowned" _Lot 49_?

G. S. Allen
Towson State University
Baltimore, MD