pynchon-l-digest V2 #4753

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

After about seven passes, no. In some ways, that is one of the joys of the book---it continues to deliver new positions and bold new vistas each time you read it. But initially, it was a real effort. It's, for the most part, a remarkably dark thing and its darkness provokes all sorts of natural aversions---you don't wanna quit on account of its periodic Joycean confusion, you wanna quit on account of the awful goings on. Which are not so awful in Vineland. There's a lighter touch here, it's Beethoven's 8th symphony or Rossini's overture to the Theiving Magpie. Gravity's Rainbow is Beethoven's Tenth or Mahler's Eleventh---as if written after the end of the world. It's a hell of a lot easier to live in Vineland, where you find reasonable facimilies of human behaviour all over the place.

Saure Bummer and TRP got together to get really ripped. Vineland is their lovechild. Love Vineland for what it really is: the funniest fiction concerning the sixties. Every time I read the book, I laugh out loud. Every time.
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: MalignD at aol.com
> << Just because it's not massive and inpenatrable doesn't make it crap. >>
> 
> There are, of course, other reasons.
> 
> And did you find GR impenetrable?