GUARDIAN PIECE ON 'VINELAND'

[alice wellintown]

>        "Zoyd is a typically cartoonish Pynchon character, equal parts
>        Homer Simpson and the Dude in The Big Lebowski, but unlike
>        previous Pynchon protagonists, there's a depth and a sadness
>        to him."
>
> I think that's one of the points being made. Starting with Vineland, there's
> more recognizable human behavior in TRP's novels.

I think you are right, and this assumes that the reviewer is privy to
the critical argument that focused on P's inability or perhaps
deliberate refusal to use characterization (a technique authors employ
to make characters) to construct characters or figures that either act
like real people or evoke a response from the reader that invests them
with human sentience and so on...do we care about this
character...James Wood...Henry James....postmodern... the end of
character & Co.

so why print it? It is a dead fly on a beaten horse whipped or not
whipped by the angry quaker Dixon as reimagined and fictionalized by
Wicks.