Best novel of the quarter century

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< M&D is actually the only Pynchon I've not read.  I got through 100 pages 
and then classes got too busy and I had to put it down.  Planning on giving it 
a re-read this summer.
 
 Do you have any specific points to make against it?  And, as an aside, what 
do you think of Vineland, which many people seem to consider his weakest? (Not 
necessarily the people on this list mind you, but every time it's mentioned 
somewhere it seems to be derided as his lesser work). >>

I'm exaggerating, calling it a turd, but I do think it was, when it appeared, 
a profoundly disappointing book, an opinion I haven't changed with time.

Why this book from this writer?  What I assusmed would be the central 
metaphor, of searing a line across the continent, a Pynchonian idea certainly -- was 
never realized in any way that soared or excited.  Instead, pockets of good 
writing, fleeting themes of interest, amidst hundreds of pages of comic set 
pieces that are occasionally amusing, just as often embarrasingly unfunny.  That 
dreadful narrator Cherrycoke and those children; the set-up is so feeble.  It's 
like Uncle Remus, but that Joel Chandler Harris is way better at writing 
dialect..  It's a novel a lit professor might write.