Sufferin' Succotash

[Dave Monroe]

I DON'T MIND admitting that I was one of those
long-suffering readers who eagerly awaited Thomas
Pynchon's new novel. Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's 1973
epic, was a daunting, compelling work, full of
lapel-clutching intimidation, lapin-from-chapeau
hocus-pocus, and fascinating tonal leap froggings--a
Nazi opera conducted by Spike Jones. It had a tension
that justified the fantasy. Which is precisely what
Vineland, the product of 17 years' labor, does not
have. The new book is a bore and a chore, and, given
all the anticipation, may rank as the literary
disappointment of the decade....

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n8_v42/ai_8370042

I cleaned up a few typos there, but ...

But I can't imagine why the NR would dislike VL ...

National Review ("NR") is a conservative political
magazine, founded by author William F. Buckley Jr. in
1955. The magazine is based in New York City and
published biweekly.

The print version of the magazine is available online
to subscribers, yet the free content of the magazine's
online web-site is essentially a new and separate
publication, with its own unique articles and blogs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Although it is interesting to see an advertisement for
an Oliver Stone film above their masthead.  I will
grant that an ideologue Wm. F. Buckley is not ...

Hart, Jeffery.  The Making of the American
   Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times.
   Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2005. 

http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=109927b6-3319-4cc2-a040-73d1bdd307e9

Allen: "Honey, there's a spider in your bathroom the
size of a Buick."
(Allen grabs Keaton's copy of National Review, rolls
it up, and slams the magazine down on the spiders).
Allen: "I did it. I killed 'em both."
(Keaton starts crying).
Allen: "What's the matter? What are you sad about?
What did you want me to do? Capture 'em and
rehabilitate 'em?"

http://imdb.com/title/tt0075686/quotes

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> And one of the more typical, negative (scathing,
> in fact: e.g., "The story hits so many false notes
> it's embarrassing and exasperating to recite them")
> reviews of _Vineland_:
> 
> 'Sufferin' Succotash'
> by J.O. Tate, _National Review_ April 30, 1990, p.
> 59.

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