Does the Broken Estate Have a Heart?

[Campbel Morgan]

He certainly doesn't value the picaresque tradition that Pynchon and
other hysterical realists have pushed, with  manic post-millenialsm
and purring prose, to the exhaustion of any possible, insert several
subjunctive clauses here, reading. What Wood correctly traces is the
point here. That is, because Pynchon's big baggy books often read like
a joke that may be sidesplitting sometime somewhere, but are so
stuffed with scene-splitting, seam-splitting sideshows and outside
pranks, there is no room for a heart inside anyone of his characters;
Pynchon's Tin Man needs to get to Oz so we can see that he really does
have a heart, but P leaves him rusting on the lawn while he tinkers
with Tesla in the garage then pudders about the garden path, then
abrubtly climbs the attic stairs to play footzie under the table with
the manwomen up there. Is there a heart in this big baggy book? One
that beats, even if under a character's feet? Or is that heart, not
evident in any of the characters, elsewhere? I'm not asying he needs
to write Jhumpa Lahiri, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison ...but, Toto
needs to pull back the curtain, someone needs to find the courage to
discover that  heart, if it exists, and explain how it beats. Or maybe
it's not in there and Pynchon is not interesting now, James, Henry and
Wood, are.