Kathyrn Hume on Late Coover

[Michael Bailey]

 bandwraith made the following rather surprising assertion;

> If you read ATD really closely, I assert, you can make out a few liftings
> from the p-list, scattered about. I don't care to elaborate, but I believe
> they're there.


the bits about af and ac, no doubt...


> I would ask:
> If you were Pynchon, wouldn't you be curious about what all the postings
> were about? I can't believe he hasn't peeked, and probably come away with a
> mixture of amazement and chagrin. It might help to explain some of the
> bogosity in ATD.
>
> i used to think that glenn scheper was an avatar of mr pynchon but
gradually came to believe in his independent existence


> At any rate, whether his later work is lousy or not, I'll leave to you.
> You're much better read than me. But I disagree with your primary assertion
> that he has become sentimental, or less "edgy" or whatever- if anything, he
> has left the traditional image of the family in a bloody shambles. The
> final pages of Vineland comes to mind,
> with Prarie alone, amongst the redwoods, in her sleeping bag,
> masturbating, begging the departed Vond to come back and take her away,
> promising to come this time. There are many more examples, but I won't
> waste your time. You are either receptive or you're not. Go with Coover.
>
>
>

wait, i never got an idea about what prairie was doing with her hands in
that scene...

Anyway, Coover definitely rocks the casaba, and i hope to find time to read
the rest of his books -- i read the one with the football player in it and
it was wonderful...

so that's good advice, imho

but for those of us who are somewhat receptive to the message in the later
p-texts, and do not see a degeneration or a regressive nodding-out of...

those who would not call those later p-texts cliched sentimental treatment
of the family, but rather - as we travel under the sands of time - a
swiveling of the same satirical periscope (yet capable of sympathy), whose
lenses respond to that peculiar clarity of kirghizian light that suffuses
the earlier works, on its turret, to point at these new topics, tempores
and mores...

i'd agree that there is more there to see
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