NPPF Preliminary

[s~Z]

But there the similarity ends. Sot-Weed is light and humorous, with a wild,
complex plot to carry you along -- an easy, if lengthy read. Mason and Dixon
has its humorous moments and passages of pure brilliance, but the story line
is weak and hard to follow, with no clear conflict or antagonist. Individual
scenes are fascinating. Individual characters are extraordinarily memorable.
But the pieces don't seem to hold together. Missing is the marvelous
paranoia that held together the wild fantastic episodes and characters of
Pynchon's early books -- especially V and Crying of Lot 49, but also
Gravity's Rainbow. In those books, the paranoid narrator found creative and
convincing ways to link together events that otherwise would seem totally
unrelated (rather like Nabokov's Kinbote in Pale Fire). Here there is a
narrative frame, with an old friend of Mason and Dixon telling their story
to his own extended family, after the American Revolution. But the narrator
does not have a unifying vision. He seems to be telling one tale after
another, almost Arabian Nights' style, rather than unraveling a mystery,
making clear an elaborate plot, or speaking under a guilt-ridden compulsion
to confess (like the Coleridge's Ancient Mariner). Although he is a
character in the story he narrates, he doesn't seem to have any real stake
in what happens; and the family chatter in the frame, while sometimes
amusing, doesn't seem to add to the story.

http://www.samizdat.com/isyn/pynchon.html