Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...

[Chris Broderick]

Fonz (AKA H. Musikar?) sez:

AtD is a piece of shit.

So I say:

OK.  Maybe so.  But why?  And if so, why bother reading it?  That's what's frustrating.  It's easy enough to say "Book X sux!" but instead of shutting down discussion with an ad hominem attack, why not give us some insight into why you think that's the case.  C'mon!  We want a good argument!

As for your qualms about the noir center mall in VL, I agree that that one page of a nearly 400 page novel was pretty weak.  One can compare it to stuff like "I Ching feet" in GR and the like.  Pynchon does have a soft spot for creakingly bad puns & jokes.  I do think that VL relied on such silliness (particularly pop cult silliness) more than GR or COL49 or V, and in some ways it worked to its detriment.  But there's a lot more, for good or ill, going on in that novel and in his others.  So what is it about them that sux?  And if they suck so much, why do you keep coming back?  Are you a glutton for punishment or do you hold out some misguided optimism that TRP is somehow going to revive the writer you believe he used to be?
 
Chris Broderick
www.myspace.com/christophermichaelbroderick
 
"Silence is so accurate."
-Mark Rothko


       
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