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

[John BAILEY]

>From Mike-No-Relation-Bailey:

>What might be of interest is the thought that there was indeed some
kind of
>a) unpleasant drug reaction/dependency whatever that he had to deal
with  (long term drug use has affected, um, some >people that I know,
and they, um, emerged with clipped wings feeling lucky to be alive) or
(paranoiacally)
>b) that Men in Black threatened him compellingly enough to convince him
to mute his post-horn

I've also wondered about the possibility that P himself was intimidated
by GR - after writing that book, you'd be hard pressed to one-up it.
Maybe he needed the time to get over it himself. Maybe 17 years is how
long it takes to finally say "hey, Tommy, you don't *need* to write
another GR. Just write something else, it doesn't need to be as radical
and mind-blowing and gosh-darn different."

Hence, the rest of the novels.

That said, I think Vineland and Atd are deft, gorgeous novels I could
return to again and again. M&D doesn't do that much for me,
unfortunately.


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