characters

[Gillies, Lindsay]

The perception that his characters are unusually schematic and that TRP is 
relatively uninterested in traditional characterization is central to his 
work.  It is the reason we are so obsessed with the author himself:  V and 
GR are novels about his ideas, not stories propelled forward through the 
drama of fictional characters.  As anonymous as he is, it is his own process 
of mentation that he exposes, not a naturalistic world in which an author 
can remain hidden.  Perhaps as a counterbalance to such an exposure of his 
personal voice he must remain hidden in person.

It is also why many people have a hard time with particularly GR (although 
the whole approach is just as prevalent in V)---you must essentially submit 
to being harangued by the author for 800+ pages before you can "connect". 
 It is surely a tour de force, but not necessarily a story.  In a sense, 
this is a weakness, this extremism of internal workings.  He's driven this 
baby about as far as it will go, which perhaps accounts for the situation we 
find technically in Vineland: even TRP himself couldn't push the performance 
of GR any further.