V---2nd, Chap 16

[alice wellintown]

> I, with Laura, have and still don't like most of this chapter.
> I don't get what all the sailor partying is about here.....seems
> very overdone.

It's a sailor's yarn. The kind he might spin from a bunk for the boys
headed for shore. The sophomoric humor and the local color are
juvenile Pynchon, as Mark noted, this yarn belongs to Meatball and
Lardass. No Marlow here and that is the problem. What happened to the
"frame narrative" technique or Stencil or even the Picaro on the road
or Benny. We still have sentimental swine who drink and dance and piss
about Paola's shrine under all that History News Flash, and  broken
Screw dry docked Yanks in the Navel of Siege and Strategic alliances
knit and un-knotted, but no birth of Christ or any rough Beast
slouching toward Suez sucking at Beatrice's plastic Breast while the
old man sings under the green haze haunts these dusty Streets. The
novel fails to fold back on its first chapter and that is obviously
the author's plan.