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

[davemarc]

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> From: doktor at primenet.com
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> Spoiler follows.....
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> Brian D. McCary writes:
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> >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.
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> >So, as a youth, he writes about death, and as an older man, he turns
> >towards youth and life?
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> >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.
> 
I'll just note that I agree with the thrust of this, and point out that
Vineland's dedication is "For my mother and father".

davemarc