pynchon-l-digest V2 #4753

robinlandseadel at comcast.net robinlandseadel at comcast.net
Thu Aug 31 15:56:21 CDT 2006


It's Rossini to Beethoven, and as Jerry Colonna put it (in "I Hate Music")---"How much meat can you put on a plate?" Just because it's not massive and inpenatrable doesn't make it crap. It's inspired comedy, the missing link between shoplifting at the mall and Marge Simpson's Buffalo Wings---"V-licious!" 
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk>
> Dave:
> 
> >Puh-leeeze, "the scholars."  GR is a masterpiece.  VL is a mediocrity.
> >  Don't need no "scholars" to figure that one out.
> 
> I'd say inspired competence rather than mediocre but do agree with 
> Dave,wouldn't put it on the same plane(t) as GR - it's rock band to 
> GR's orchestras. It's an elegy, with hints of hopes, for the 
> counterculture/new left of P's younger years. Works fine on that 
> level, but it has other more universal levels.
> 
> >And if VL can "easily be 'decoded' as an anti-Reagan polemic or a
> >panorama/panegyric of Leftist activities in America's postwar years,"
> >I'd say that wasn't a good recommendation for it...
> 
> I think Robin was saying its depths have been missed because of the 
> dominant tone, a-and he wasn't suggesting it was a good 
> recommendation - he was saying scholars can be complacent.
> 
> Mike 
> 





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