TP: Rereading Vineland

[Jorn Barger]

This FAQ thang has got me re-reading Vineland for the first time since
it came out... and I'm bogging down in exactly the same way, within
the first 100 pages...!

The feeling I get, again, is that Pynchon's narrative voice
communicates a flat, mind-numbing *trance*, no matter what the plot is
doing, and (to boot) is usually convoluted enough that you feel you'll
have to reread each paragraph multiple times to grasp his meaning.

I might have been willing to make this effort, except that I simply
don't *believe* the central plot device of Frenesi-the-narc-- I'm
unconvinced by his whole analysis of American politics, so trying
to puzzle out the details seems not-worth-it, and I end up skating
over the trance-voice, looking for dialog and action...

Thinking about GR, I suspect the trance-voice was evolving as he wrote
that, and may have become habitual now, a stylistic ideal that TP
needs to break out of, move beyond...?

jorn
(hey, that Spiked CD sounds worth buying!  thanks EMC for the blurb)