new GR version / pynchon and "structure"

[gp]

Just picked it up today.  It looks nice.  My only complaint is that
the quality is the same as that of the Penguin Great Books series - it
looks nice 'til you're reading it and halfway through the binding
cracks and by the end of the second reading you're left with a book
split into two pieces.  I think Miller's work looks great - much
better in person than when seen online.  But I do wish they had done a
better job at binding it.

Beyond that, I spoke with a professor at my school lately whose
opinion I hold in high esteem.  We talked a little bit about
"structured" novels.  I remember that when he asked me what I thought
a novel was, I brought up Naked Lunch, Gravity's Rainbow, and
Doestoyevsky in general as diverse variations of types of novels.  He
agreed that Dostoyevsky was definitely structured and that Naked Lunch
certainly was as well - but when he came to GR he said something to
the effect of "I think it's structured, I don't always understand what
Pynchon is going for but I do believe there is structure".

The thing that struck me was that he didn't seem to have any problem
thinking that Naked Lunch was structured - even though it was put
together almost by random by Ginsberg and Kerouac from the papers they
found laying around Burrough's room, if I remember correctly, and if
you look at a book like Nova Express - structured?  Really?  Sure, I
consider Naked Lunch and Nova Express to be novels in a sense, but to
accept that as a given and then sort of qualm at the idea of structure
and Pynchon seemed quite odd - does anyone have an opinion on this /
know what he might have been getting at?  The man undeniably knows his
literature so I'd be interested to know what he might have meant -
because I definitely think Pynchon has structure, all of his works,
even V. - which I actually might understand people shuffling their
feet about when it comes to discussing structure.  Hopefully next time
we meet up I'll remember to ask him directly.

He did have a picture of Burroughs on his desk, holding a book with a
large title reading: "I AM NOT A ROLE MODEL" so perhaps he's more
inclined to give the man some slack (and he may have met Burroughs in
person, I almost assume it in fact).

Sorry to include two topics in one post but I figured I'd try to not
clutter the list.