VLVL Prairie and DL

[Terrance]

> 
> Nobody's perfect, thank God, so I can't see how little flaws are subject to
> the intense criticism they seem to get from you.  Like what's so bad about a
> teenager working in an organic pizza shop?  Or kids helping the family make
> ends meet by catching crwafish.  Or giving your kids funky names (Pynchon
> gives all his babies funky names).  I just don't see it, but I never got
> this book.  It never held together for me.

Well, there is nothing wrong a teenager having a job at a pizza place or
in a Mall. Nothing wrong with kids helping out on the family farm. If my
neighbor decides to call his kid Moon Iridescence Rising Over Nuristan
(we call him Miron) that's not my business. But in Vineland, having a
job in the Mall is not like having a job in the Mall in your typical
American town or city. In Lecture for Good Readers and Writers Nabokov
talks about dealing with the fictional world that the artist created.
That's all I'm trying to do here.  We have to see how it holds together
first.