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

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

         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!

Glad sombody said it, Chris. If you feel a need to be contrarian, 
to indulge in Transgression For The Hell Of It, fine, but let's not 
confuse that overheated catalytic convertor in that pile of dry, 
raked leaves over there with any sort of meaningful 
disscussion of the subject at hand. As far as I can tell, Our 
Beloved Author is having a bit of fun with his Most Devoted 
Audience; probably having read a few critiques concerning 
OBA written by MDA's forced our eternally silent ring-leader 
to create new and even more unfathomable self-referential 
labyrinths within the only outlet that reality allows, which is 
in his books.

         CB:
         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.  

Those are some of my favorite pages in Vineland, like a 
prescient vision of future Simpsons episodes:

         All at a fairly easy what Brent Musberger 
         might've called level of play, a routine long 
         perfected and usually just for getting 
         warmed up with.VL 331

         See Bea:        
         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.

Usually, those puns and joke ultimately function as some kind of a
koan, pointing elsewhere, usually meaningfully.  

         Seabee:
         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.  

I think when TRP lightened up, the motives of the characters 
in his novels became more plausible. Guess we might have a 
difference of opinion here. The kind of existential dread that 
pervades GR doesn't really return in the later books, at least
to not the same degree. 

         See. Be.
         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?

Or is it perhaps that your chosen Transgression For The 
Hell Of It is primarily pyromanical in nature?
 
         "Silence is so accurate."
         -Mark Rothko