Question

[Alan Joyce]

I just discovered and joined this list, so forgive me if this ground has
been covered: I'm just a bit curious as to other Pynchon-fans' opinions
about David Foster Wallace, esp. with regard to "Infinite Jest". 
Everywhere I look, he seems to bag these glowing reviews that hail him as
some kind of master who's picked up Pynchon's dropped torch...and I'm
sorry, but I don't see it.  The book's long and (slightly) complicated,
but struck me as ultimately unfulfilling and not nearly as knowledgeable
or rich as a Pynchon novel -- hell, I'd rather read "Vineland" again. 

I wonder if the over-enthusiastic reviews are a result of desperation on
the part of critics who want to be the first to identify a "modern master"
and who react like slobbering hounds to any thick contemporary tome that
smacks of postmodernism, or if it just comes from the fact that nobody
seems to have read more than the first hundred pages, which are admittedly
not too bad. Unfortunately, the subsequent 900 leave much to be desired... 

Or am I just so much of a Pynchon devotee that I would automatically react
this way against any author compared to him? 

Curiously,

Alan Joyce
caj3+ at pitt.edu