IVIV (1)

[David Morris]

God, reading these posts makes me wonder whether I should even bother.

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:51 PM, rich<richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some say harsh satire but I don't really feel much of an edge to the goings on in IV; it feels all so sorta pointless, hardly sad or melancholic, profound or otherwolrdly which I think are Pynchon's strengths in general--all of that makes up for his goofy streak which is pretty much all we get in IV.
>
> in a word, IV feels "unnecessary"
>
> Rich
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 7:44 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Sad to say, I agree with most of this.  >>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>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.