Warm & Fuzzy M&D (spoiler pp. 1 - 425)

[doktor at primenet.com]

Spoiler follows.....










Brian D. McCary writes:

>It seems like the early
>books and short stories were increasingly centered around death.  In
>GR, he finally got his hands around the problem and said what he had to
>say.  In Vineland, he starts trying a new direction, and the children
>in the book start moving toward center stage, and are no longer the feral
>packs of orphans which appear through GR.  This trend may, or may not
>hold up with M&D.
>
>So, as a youth, he writes about death, and as an older man, he turns
>towards youth and life?


>From what I've read so far (p. 425), you've hit the nail on the head.  From
the dedication (to wife and child, rather than to no one or to a college
drinking/writing buddy), to the very first sentence, which mutates those
death-delivering V2s into harmless kids' snowballs, to the gentle teasing
back and forth between Rev'd Cherrycoke and his juvenile audience, to
Mason's boyish frustration with his father and his innocent youthful
infatuation to Rebekah, this is a more moving, less emotionally arid
Pynchon than we've seen before.  Having watched my own world view change in
the five years since my own children were born, I can't help but attribute
this welcome change in tone to TRP's fatherhood.

--Jimmy