ATD: NO SPOILERS NO PAGE # Re: Rocketmen and Wastelands

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< As I was taking Skippy out for her walk this afternoon ... etc.>>

Oooh.  Hurt me. 

I certainly don't want to drink with you, let alone trip with you but, in 
this offered vein of false comaraderie, let me suggest that it would serve 
everyone here--you most of all, but everyone--to come into this new novel with an 
open mind.  Yes, it's exciting that there's a new book, but if the argument is 
that everything Pynchon writes is great because Pynchon wrote it, what's the 
point?  There's nothing left to do but search for his acorns of research and 
erudition.  Those will always be there, but the broad and interesting questions 
of what is the novel attempting and how successful is the attempt, is subsumed 
in a scurrying about for aracana and denial of any misstep.

I think Pynchon has his name on some very weak writing, despite his having 
written GR which is, in my opinion, as good a book as I have read.  That, I 
think, should be part of the interest in him.  I think, thusfar, one can observe 
real and recurrent weaknesses in his writing, but in GR, even the weaknesses 
served.  In the following novels they have not.  That is, itself, interesting, 
but I can't discuss that with people who deny there is any weakness whatsoever, 
let alone with people who think even the idea of Pynchon having weaknesses is 
a dump taken on the altar.   

By the way, somebody should have told your dear old daddy before he offered 
up these quotes you supply that repeating marginally witting sayings doesn't 
make one witty or wise.

Did he babble this crap, tits on goats, etc., day and night?