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

[Ray Easton]

On Tuesday, Jun 12, 2007, at 16:05 US/Central, 
robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> what is it that makes GR superior
> to AtD? I'll be more selective in my personal descriptors, honestly, I
> simply want to be illuminated. What is this great, uncrossable divide
> which you are describing?

I was *not* comparing AtD with GR.  That was The Fonz.  I expressed my 
disappointment with AtD, which is not at all that "it's not GR".

I started a long post to respond to your question, attempting to 
explain why I think GR is masterpiece on the scale of _Moby Dick_ or 
_Ulysses_, what I see as GR's place in the history of the novel... and 
blah, blah, blah... and blah, blah, blah... (including, of all things, 
a long discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas's views on the metaphysical 
nature of Angels).  I had great fun working on it, but I'm sure that it 
was largely incomprehensible to anyone but me, and, even worse, 
ultimately it bored me -- so I trashed it.

But since you ask I will indulge in one purely subjective comparison 
between these two novels.

Reading GR is for me an entirely absorbing, wildly intoxicating 
experience.  Not just when I first encountered it -- but still, all 
these years later, every time I begin it again.

Reading AtD was one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences I 
have had with a novel in a very long time.

This is *not* offered as a critique of AtD.  Most of the people I know 
find _Ulysses_ boring, and _Moby Dick_, and Shakespeare's Tragedies.  
It is clear to me that the fault in these cases is with the reader, not 
with the works.  And so the fault in the case of AtD may well be with 
this reader.  But it would be dishonest of me not also to add -- "but I 
very much doubt it".

Ray