IVIV (1) "She came along the alley and up the back steps ..."

[alice wellintown]

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.