The Big One

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

I'm not saying the novel will be the masterstroke of the man's career (though I am very intrigued by the slice of time where the novel will be operating). I'm saying it has the potential to be the masterstroke. 

I am noting that the level readings of the Schadenfreude/Snark index as regards the quality of TRP's upcoming massive tome just made the little LED display on my Yoyodyne Snark-o-meter explode into twenty minature fireballs. 

Vineland is nothing like GR. So people dump on it. People can't seen to get from one end to the other of M&D, so they dump on it. Because they dumped on the last two books they reflexively dump on the new book just to keep their batting averages up. I like Vineland, I came from a far left family. The book makes perfect, delicious, sense to me. I feel that TRP dedicated it to his Mom & Dad for a damned good reason: Vineland is all about family. Sorry if you don't feel the same. On some level M&D baffles me, but the book has many episodes that really work and an overall sense of scale that matches GR. The strange typogragaphy and other deviations from the modern use of language didn't bother me (though the book needs footnotes waaaay more than "Infinite Jest") but I suspect that many readers gave up on account of that particular creative feature of the book. I suspect that the language barriers erected in M&D will not be present in "Against The Day", and considering the author's inte
rests in table-tapping, the latest in "New World Orders", weird political systems, sexual deviations, new chemicals, bizzare inventions and crazy scientists, there's a good chance that TRP will have great fun delivering another twisted history lesson. So I'm looking forward to the book.

But it feels like folks 'round here are sharpening their razors even as we speak (or type). It's like they want the book to be awful, just so they can prove their point. I have no idea what they're expecting, but the few lines from "ATD" that we got were beset upon like raw meat. It read like Pynchon to me.

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: MalignD at aol.com
Were all this speculation mere play, maybe I'd agree with you, but people are seriously calling an unread novel a culmination, a masterpiece.  Millison has already decided that, in the future, all his novels, including this one, yet unpublished, will be judged so powerful that all critical judgement will be united into one unanimous assent.