dust jackets

[Edward Heinemann]

> 
> I should have added to my note that I think this dust jacket thing seems
> mighty "domesticated" for the person the novels suggest to be TP.
> 

Well...it's not too different in tone from his plug for Steve
Erickson's "Days Between Stations":

"Steve Erickson has that rare and luminous gift for reporting
back from the nocturnal side of reality, along with an engagingly
romantic attitude and the fierce imaginative energy of a born
storyteller. It is good news when any of these qualities appear
in a writer - to find them all together in a first novelist is
reason to break out the champagne and hors-d'oeuvres."

Or, more succinctly, Don DeLillo's "Mao II":

"This novel's a beauty. A vision as bold and a voice as eloquent
and morally focused as any in American writing."

Or his words of his praise for Tom Robbins, among others, undoubtedly.
I'm glad you brought this up; I've been fascinated for quite a while
between the apparent contrast in tone and artistic priorities between
"high" Pynchon (V, Lot 49, GR) and his dust-jacket cottage-industry.
Pynchon straightforwardly praises morality, beauty, and romanticism, all
artistic values his novels elaborately undercut and complicate (while
deploying them marvelously at the same time, of course). I, for one,
tend to think that these blurbs, along with recent shorter writings
like "Nearer My Couch to Thee" and "Is it OK to Be a Luddite?", indicate
that the simpler (that's a relative word) style and moral structure
of "Vineland" reflect a genuine sea-change in Pynchon's artistic values
and practice. And prove that the introduction to Slow Learner isn't an
elaborate pomo hoax, as Messrs. McHoul and Wills would have it. Unless,
of course, *all* of these snippets are part of a broader Pynchon-
conspiracy to portray himself as a down-home, folksy, romantic kind of
guy, only to knock us over the head with a millennial "Finnegans Wake"
(we can only hope)...

Any other thoughts out there?

Ed