Ch 6 of V-2 Eeeeeeraaaaah, wutsupdoc?

[Joseph Tracy]

Arguing over Pynchon's dialog is fun if you like brilliant reparte  
like "you don't know shit... maybe you should sut up"  and "I really  
would like for you to just go away",
  I too might be inclined to sut up , once revealed as the literary  
mountebank I truly am, but I'm wondering if anyone was planning to  
risk a few remarks on ch 6.  To weigh in on the controversy I think  
Pynchon's ear has gotten rather good ( In ways Robin illumintes well) 
and I think V is  weaker than later writing in several ways,  
including dialog.  But I think this is a powerful first novel with   
an unusual and perhaps unprecedented structure; it also has a  
largeness of vision carried by some beautifully written passages and  
a quirky humor that signals a unique voice.  I sense we are failing  
as a critical body to consider the ways Pynchon in V is marking out  
his own territory and  perhaps even reshaping the possibilities of  
fiction.  Accustomed to a more fluent and  dramatically engaging  
writer we are failing to see the formal daring-do of the Pynchon who  
wrote V. I think part of that disengagement  is the failure of the  
Benny Profane story. He just keeps insistently yo yoing , which, in a  
second read  begins to feel like doing nothing( interestng that  one  
Pynchon's rare essays is about sloth). Still, even Benny becomes  a  
door into some interesting terrain, and subterrain.

I think I will read ch 6  of V  tonight after I  finish this still  
rather lackluster Lethem  novel.  He brought in a 3 legged dog to  
offer a semi-salvific change to the only character of real interest ,  
and it kinda worked for awhile, but now looks like no more than  the  
lead-in to a maudlin death scene. I don't think there is any saving  
of this  3 character dog.