cultural capital and why we read and write books

[Michael Bailey]

Mark wrote:
>
> I thought The Marriage Plot revealed irreal thinness from the opening ---so
> I stopped
> reading. Maybe should reconsider.
>

I liked it pretty well - there was some really nice writing in there,
mostly unobtrusive but good storytelling and mood-capturing that
inspired me to finally also pull _Middlesex_ from the shelf and read
it too...which really cooked (imho)

but can't see how anyone would enjoy MP over Inherent Vice...

mild spoiler ahead...

room for both books in the world and on my shelf, and maybe there's a
kinship - instead of ending in marriage, the prot. of MP wins in a
different way, His world sort of opens out by rejecting (quietly,
consensually) the marriage plot instead of wrapping up in it...and the
anti-prot (I guess you'd call him) instead of riding his madness
roughshod over the young lady to a sad end also frees himself by
walking away from marriage, both of them leaving her to study
Austenology unfettered and perhaps draw into her circle a truly
suitable male...

Just as Pynchon's PI Doc "solves the case(s)" in terms of winning a
Vegas payoff on Mickey, saving the salvageable saxophonist, seeing
footage of Charlock's demise (as close to solved and saved as one can
imagine for that poor preterite one), and orffing a truly bad
personage with his own firepower instead of bringing perps to justice
-- in fact, justice in the form of Bigfoot points him at the
villain...