Wheat, chaff, stalks, seeds

[John Carvill]

You *really* do not like IV, Rich, eh?

I think you underestimate the importance of the book, at least to an
extent. To me, it seems a very nicely balanced blend of elements
which, on their own, are worthy, eg. the noir pastiche, etc. But, as
ever with Pynchon, something the book shares with GR, ATD, etc., is
that it all adds up to a lot more than the sum of those parts.

For what it's worth, I gave IV as a 40th birthday present to a guy who
I've unsucessfully tried to get reading Pynchon several times before,
and he just told me the other day how much he's enjoying it.
Ironically, one of the first things he had to say about the book was,
"It's got some great characters in it..."

Hey, how was he supposed to know that Pynchon books don't have
'characters' in 'em?

It's possible to smother pretty much anything - yes, even a Pynchon
novel - in a huge blanket of over-expectation. You (and all of us
here) are approaching IV as a bit Pynchon 'fan', with all sorts of
preconceptions. Plus, be fair, you were in a bad mood when the book
was published anyway. Maybe you'll reconsider the book somewhere down
the line?


> but i think u noted this already Laura, and it bears repeating that
> parodying something that is already the object of so much parody or is
> a parody itself (TV, movies) is really is annoying, unoriginal and
> pointless and really sinks IV
>
> Pynchon seems to have a problem with being super smart which is OK and
> he usually is good at balancing the dumb and the smart but if Vineland
> was a half-hearted attempt compared to the monster works, IV is dead
> on arrival--its mostly chaff or better yet the sticks and seeds
>
> rich