Pynchon's fat novel repudiated?

[David Gentle]

> I know  a few Europeans who have read Underworld
> and they did *not* like it. It was too American.
> It truly is a very American novel (not
> necessarily "The GAN"), and much of it is very
> New York.  It goes from a famous baseball game to
> massive consumerism and Cold War paranoia with
> Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover and the Texas
> Highway Killer and all sorts of good
> old-fashioned Amerikan things. I think it's hard
> for non-Americans (or even Americans under age
> 40) to connect with (if you will).
Are Brits included as Europeans? Because, while I've never really understood baseball (and I have no
desire to do so), I really enjoyed the opening of Underworld.
Check UK TV schedules some time and note the huge amount of 'Merkin TV we watch. When I was a kid we
used to play war games in american accents because it sounded cooler to us. In fact, sitting here
typing this I'm sure I've gone over this before on the p-list, but America is a sort of mythic land
for a lot of us out here. A couple of years ago I picked up an atlas witht the intent of figuring
out where a load of places I'd heard of in the US actually were. I was genuinly surprised at how
many tiny little towns had names that I recognised from somewhere (song lyrics, TV shows).
I'm not here to judge this phenomena, just to point it out to the 'Merkin-breed.

David Gentle