Creeping Figs

[Carvill John]

>Me too.  I imagine Zoyd himself drifting through the creeping fig in a
>wake of sunlight.

Ahhhhhhh that's beautiful. This has turned out to be a very busy weekend for 
me so I can't give this as much attention as I'd like. But when I first came 
to Pynchon (oh, ok I admit, still today) I often had to go back and re-read 
one of his trademark long complicated senetces, thinking he'd slipped up and 
surely that didn't work, but you always find it does work, it's just 
difficult to keep up with him sometimes. But that Vineland opener just 
doesn't seem to work for me, it's jarring, it's almost as if he made a 
mistake and his editor didn't spot it. Well maybe, in the middle of a book, 
in a non-key passage, maybe that would happen. BUt in the first sentence of 
his eagerly-awaited first book since 1973? Can't be, can it?..... And if it 
isn't a mistake, whatever he intended it's quite a curve to throw at the 
reader, even by P's standards, right at the start, is it not?

Cheers
JC