IVIV "not a looking glass held up to California circa 1970."

[Doug Millison]

Something to stick to the ribs this wet wild windy bay day; thanks,  
alice:

> In any event, P is commenting on the current state of affairs more
> than the history that his readers are not likely to recall or remember
> with any degree of certainty or faith. That he historisizes should not
> cause readers to project a wiki-novel world from the fragments he has
> deliberately left ...unmelted and fractured. P's texts are a
> fragmanted and cracked looking glass held up to Nature and not a
> looking glass held up to California circa 1970.


P.S.  I assume that anybody who liked Mason & Dixon will get off on  
The House of the Seven Gables.  I also enjoyed The Scarlet Letter a  
lot when I went back to it a few years ago, after reading it in high  
school.  Agreed that V. and GR reach for the Melville sky and maybe  
beyond, young Pynchon seems to have been extremely ambitious.