[M&D] possible spoilers - 1st chapter

[doktor at primenet.com]

Heikki writes:

>There's also another Pynch novel that starts around Mid-Atlantic
>in a snowy Christmastime evening. It's been 10 years since another
>War. But Benny Profane, orphan, drifts outside with other orphans,
>without any comfortable Room at the rear of any House.

Nice point.  I was so taken with M&D's opening's softer, more familiar
gloss on GR that I missed the V. opening similarities altogether.

Quibble: Benny isn't an orphan.  He goes to visit his folks midway through
the book, finds them not in, and eats, concluding (quoting from memory),
"They'd know he'd been there."

Or did you mean orphan in a less literal sense?

--Jimmy