VL-IV role reversal in Vineland in a general sort of way

[Michael Bailey]

kelber wrote:
> I like Vineland for what it is, but it lacks a lot of what I love about Pynchon's work:  the densely >packed, arcane references, amazing connections, cool and fascinating settings that all create the >general urge to Google-search or otherwise look stuff up.  Baedeker's is cooler than Hawaii 5-0. > Chapter 9 goes on and on.  It's entertaining and well-written and has lots of great turns of phrase >(softoff, for example), but it never fascinates or mind-blows.  Pynchon certainly has a right to write >about things that are more in our scope, less arcane, but he runs the risk of being less interesting >when he does so.

de gustibus, I guess.  A person could (among a galaxy of possible views)
look at Vineland as a clumsy attempt to replicate Gravity's Rainbow
(or, some other work)
or a brilliantly executed description of
something quite different (which nonetheless has points of
intersection with experience and a fair amount of unfamiliar (to me)
references such as Fresson Process and caustics and Mildred Pierce)

It's like the pizza at the Bodhi Dharma - Zoyd is enamored of a
different kind of pizza, and therefore theirs suffers in comparison.
I'm just trying to share some of the things I love about it...



-- 
--
"Frenesi's eyes, even on the aging ECO stock, took over the frame, a
defiance of blue unfadable."