Does the Broken Estate Have a Heart?

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 23, 2009, at 10:50 AM, Campbel Morgan wrote:

> . . . maybe it's not in there and Pynchon is not interesting
> now, James, Henry and Wood, are.

Feels like you're applying a tea & crumpets aesthetic to a 420 festival.

I felt something when I read "Against the Day." of course, a lot of  
what I felt was humor, found plenty of the book laugh-out-loud funny.  
And obviously some folks won't. Right -wingers sure won't. Crypto- 
Fascists probably won't like it either. It's not that I'm engaging in  
flame-throwing here, it's just that a lot of the novel's vivid  
satirical portraiture is applied to Republicans, Christians, Plutocrats 
—the whole sick crew that mans the helm. Far-left folks and fans of  
Steampunk and Science-Fiction most certainly will get a kick out of  
it. As with all of Pynchon's books, I felt a whole lot more emotional  
impact once I started re-reading it. A lot of the book is visionary in  
a good-old-fashioned religious "awe" sort of way, and some folks don't  
take a hankerin'' to that, neither.

Somehow, applying the literary aesthetic of the early 20th century to  
THE author who defines literary Postmodernism seems like comparing  
angel food cake to tarantulas.