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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