BE as P's attempt at Greek New Comedy

[John Bailey]

I'm increasingly wondering if the new novel isn't Pynchon's conscious
attempt to write a New Comedy, in contrast to the Old Comedy that most
of his work can be aligned with. Or, if we're going to get more
detailed, with the Menippean Satire that some have convincingly argued
is his forte. But I'm sticking with the Old/New divide of the Greeks
for the moment.

It would perhaps explain why this one jars so much for so many. It's
sitcom, not systems analysis, and when it gives us types (Jewish
American, African American, Italian American) it doesn't do so in the
obviously ironic way his earlier works did. It doesn't give us the
linguistic miracles that offer a way out of the existential morass in
the manner we're used to P providing. It tries to offer characters
we're supposed to care for, which is antithetical to Old Comedy, even
if that mode is a more compassionate one on a structural level. BE
leaves us with mere people, individuals, not even a hint of the
preterite, which is interesting and a problem.

A Coover take on 2001-02 would look more like what we could have
expected from Bleeding Edge.

Why, in both IV and BE, has Pynchon returned to close third person
narration (with at least one exception in BE that I've noticed?) It's
not What He Does. Not even in Vineland. He toyed with it in COL49 but
then declared it a minor work. Why go back there?
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l