IVIV Hope Harlingen: a wacky theory (possible spoilers)

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown wrote:
> Tony Tanner
> http://www.americansc.org.uk/Reviews/AmericanMystery.htm
> &
> Deborah Tannen
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Tannen
> Brian McHale
> http://home.foni.net/~vhummel/Image-Fiction/chapter_4.html
> Richard McKeon
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McKeon
>

thanks for those!

Cervantes was always on about the "damnable romances", and how they
ruined poor DQ's life; they were the equivalent television
of their time, in a way, or so goes my hypothesis.

>IV has lots of laughs. I don't
> think the fact that IV has no, none, not one, moment of tenderness,
> says anything much about Thomas R Pynchon's philosophy or his view of
> the CIA or anything like that. He just doesn't do tenderness without
> irony.

what I liked  most about Vineland was the tenderness, and I'm not unhappy
about the tenderness level in IV.  I don't even think my reading for tenderness
is as skewed as my reaching for political resonances (war is the junk of the
state, which has textual support (somewhere, gads it is hard to find, I thought
it was at Penny's place but now I'm not even sure who said it), but also
the eminent Dems which clicked for me without much prompting from the text)

That is, I see tenderness, a lot of tenderness, but you know there
can never be enough...so I won't argue that point...

...say, Robin's hosting, and he's got some interesting points over on
another thread...