authors under the influence

[Joseph T]

I don't love everything DFW publishes, but I think those of you who  
don't like his work are just missing the boat.  Many of the charges  
leveled at Wallace -- of long, mazey sentences, of purposeful  
opaqueness, of mechanical characters and pointlessly long and wordy  
novels -- are bulls-eye Pynchonian.

I am a latecomer to DFW and was going to read Infinite Jest, but to  
get a taste I bought a copy of Oblivion (short stories) and read most  
of it before I lost interest. I can't relate to the trapped in your  
own skull predicament of his characters. It's as though this is a  
world where people think instead of breathing. There is no air , no  
exchange of fluids. Maybe that was the intent, but I don't think this  
is the character of the oblivion that faces us.  Maybe I'm  off base  
and this book was a narrow exercise. Anyone else read it?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20061016/4e9f7dc6/attachment.html>