IVIV (1)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Sad to say, I agree with most of this.  Still, I'm willing to spend time listening to other's opinions and teasing out what's worthwhile in the book.  Got nothing better to do.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 18, 2009 7:30 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: IVIV (1) "She came along the alley and up the back steps ..."
>
>The book has some merit. Not much. For some odd reason Pynchon has
>thrown out what he does well and kept what his does only average or
>less than average. This is not the let down that VL was. It's far
>worse. There is very little here to call this a work we should pass on
>to other readers other than those that want to read a novel by Pynchon
>and can't get through the other six. The style is ugly and difficult
>to put up with. The language is so saturated with stupid and mundane
>talk show F-word and groovy cool consumer crap and pop culture it
>crowds out what little beauty Pynchon has invested in the work. Also,
>the narrative choice makes all characters through Doc's POV flat. This
>can not be avoided, but Pynchon takes some silly risks here by
>introducing all these racial and ethnic types that are clearly not
>69-70 types but later types that work well in buddy cop films and can
>even cartoon it through in VL, but fall flat on their flat faces in
>IV.
>
>
>The opening gets the job done, almost. In fact, the Pizza Pipeline
>scene, which has some of what we expect in a Pynchon novel, a whole
>sick crew of bouncing voices around a pizza (the snips of dialogue
>here are brilliant), is interrupted by the Shasta yearbook
>characterization and the other tellings of character backgrounds and
>fillings. It's not disjointed for a reason. It just is.