Your Arm's Too Short to Fight with Thomas Pynchon

[Michael Bailey]

he doesn't seem to have much of a case

good things about  making up names -
a) you avoid possible lawsuits, or even inflicting discomfiture
to people whose names you're using

b) John Gardner's advice about wanting to induce a dream-state
and doing nothing to jar the reader out of the spell (though Lord
knows Gardner's own plots have some odd developments)
may be good or not so much
(that's a meta-question)
- (though being able to tell the difference between fiction
and reality is one of the criteria of trust for many of us, and immersion
in a dream isn't the main thing I'm seeking in fiction)
but the mere fact of a character having a name I haven't encountered before
isn't gonna un-suspend my disbelief
-- I've met too many people with improbable names IRL

"reduced to its conventional elements, it is basically a
conventional detective story"
It is so _not_...
I'll grant that the involvement of an "innocent" into a plot
is a convention that he plays with, but good gravy,
what happens is that Oedipa encounters the mysteries
of society and (perhaps for the first time in her life)
becomes interested and involved in them - it's a
Bildungsroman (the fact that I'm prone to calling
lots of books that, such as 1984, is noted...)

"the ... ending is clearly meant to suggest that we cannot
know the "truth" but it does so in the lamest way"
piffle - the ending shows Oedipa preparing to become
involved as a collector, utilizing her executor's privilege
to take her place in the interpretation of history and suggests
that we go and do likewise.  What we will find will differ
since our own heritage will be different - it doesn't so much
matter what's printed on the stamps as that we show up
at the auctions of our own life...

'it's increasingly difficult to develop any sort of empathy
towards [the characters] and their plight"
increasing from when: from the point when he laid down
the book and started thinking of ways to diss it?
If you watch Oedipa, she develops within the book,
and an attentive reader develops along with her: from
an insular self-concerned existence to a compassionate
concern with unpacking historical facts to a comprehension
of the human passions and actions they are built of

"I'm told that the novel is funny but I'm afraid that its irony
is too flat to make me laugh or even chuckle in the self-satisfied
and sophisticated manner that I (unfortunately) often do."
huh?  irony?  I'm not superclear on irony anyway,
(the definitions in Wikipedia seem to suggest that irony
is hardly ever funny-ha-ha)
but I don't think it's a hallmark of Pynchon.
He's more of a satirist, isn't he, and the laughs come more from
athletic wordplay, don't they?  And when they come, they
really are funny ha-ha.

"I'm really unimpressed with his use of science and technology"
hmm, I'm a bit contrarian here, but I've never felt that was
his focus - seems to me that he's more concerned with the
human heart (and that's why I love his books)