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

[Bryan Snyder]

Hilarious. 

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Henry Winkler
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 2:08 PM
To: Chris Broderick
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...

 

I'm not trying to shut down discussion. It's just the way I felt after
reading those two books. As in..."man that book really sucked." Particularly
AtD which took me months to read because it was so awful in parts and there
was no compelling plotline. The Noir Center part is not the only shitty
thing in Vineland. The Dr. Elasmo stuff is awful. The Chipco stuff is awful.
The phony movies are crap. There are things I like about Pynchon that makes
me re-read him, but there is a definite decline in his work after GR. I
think the lack of enthusiasm for the AtD group read says a lot about how bad
that book turned out. There is no enthusiasm for AtD because it is a bad
book. 80% off on Amazon means something when Mitch Ablom's new book is only
40% off. That means Mitch Ablom's book is twice as good as AtD. 

 

Fonz 

 

On 6/12/07, Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com> 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?  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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