Beyond the Rainbow

[Michael Bailey]

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 9:09 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The weapon in VL, if we pay attention, is not a gun or a penis, or
> even the big hollywood lights or the camera or even Ray-Gun or Big
> Brother Totalitarianism or Agrandized Executive Power or War on Drugs
> & Co. or Brock Vond & etc..., but the TUBE. Doesn't frighten you
> enough? Doesn't frightem me enough. It hasn't, not for Zoyd's
> generation of for Prairie's, the same ontological paranoia of the BOMB
> and those gnostic knights in GR.
>

but weapon is only one instantiation of the general class McGuffin.
The Tube isn't a weaponly McGuffin, nor meant to be.
Vineland isn't a frightening book (GR sort of is, besides being
hilarious, poetic, and (sigh) encyclopedic)
It's wistful, remorseful, skanky, delicious and trippy;
thought-provoking, and gentle and generous.
's why I like Vineland better, all told, even though the excellences
of GR are unquestionable.