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

[Ray Easton]

On Tuesday, Jun 12, 2007, at 11:53 US/Central, Chris Broderick wrote:

> 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?

Unlike The Fonz, I quite enjoyed VL and I think that M&D is very good.  
Both may well be "mediocre compared to GR" -- but something can be 
quite good and still be "mediocre compared to GR".  I joined the list 
last Fall for the express purpose of participating in the group read of 
AtD.  I have been participating, but silently -- because AtD seems to 
me so bad that I feel have nothing to contribute.

Why is it bad?  From my perspective, trying to show that AtD is bad 
would be like trying to prove that there is no Martian in the room with 
me now -- there's simply nothing at all about it that is any good.  The 
only thing to recommend it is the occasional brilliance of the prose, 
though appearing in the contexts it does, even that cannot redeem this 
novel.

I've no interest in arguing this view, for a couple of reasons.  In the 
first place, it strikes me that arguing this view on the p-list would 
be rather like arguing to a devout Catholic that the doctrine of the 
Trinity is horseshit.  Except in the rarest of circumstances, no good 
is going to come from such a discussion.  More importantly, I'm not at 
this point quite prepared to write AtD off.  When confronted with a 
"large" work of art by a major artist that appears to be awful, I think 
that one should be initially suspicious that the problem is with 
oneself, rather than with the work.  I could not finish the _The 
Recognitions_ on my first attempt, and I would now put it on a very 
short list of important post-WWII American fiction.  I am still hoping 
that I am wrong about AtD, and am hoping that perhaps the exchanges on 
the list during the group read will enable me to "get it".

Why bother reading it?  Well, gee, how was I supposed to know how bad 
it was before I read it?  Trust the reviewers?

Ray