Very P. but all impressionistic

[Plainmrbotanyb at protonmail.com]

The question brings to mind the TOS disclaimer in software, something like
"provided “as is” without any warranty of any kind, and no other warranties, whether express, implied, or otherwise, are made with respect to the same, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or safety, or any warranties that may arise from course of dealing."

From the tradition of storytelling, where presumably the agenda has always been to be allowed a share in fire-warmth and food distribution, a niche in the group, has the novel really evolved so much?

By even those simple terms, gross sales aren't so much the best gauge, but instead, the return that each contribution netted in terms of presumable human satisfaction for the author (here one speculates as an amateur fan) --- V. the ability to attract an agent, editor, audience and leave the day job, but also to establish a field of connotations and contrasts utilizing his college and Navy experiences and commenting on culture; Lot 49 as an expansion of Schoenmaker's thesis in V. about random caries and cabals, and a miracle of compression, and though he denigrated it,( didn't he? ) a resolute rebuttal of sophomore slump; GR the opportunity to bury the needle, "do the police in voices" and idiosyncratically respond to lionization; Vineland to deal with a hard act to follow, and profit - while also smarting - from harsh criticism from those whose expectations were different, as well as meditate long upon human love and betrayal and loneliness in a setting closest of all the books to the author's own times and places; M&D to exercise mature power while expanding the existing genre of historical novel; AtD reaffirming an old upper room/lower room notion from the Meatball Mulligan days, with the Chums as those who think, and the earthbound characters as those who feel; IV I risk saying offered a chance to yodel a somewhat mellowed viewpoint among the lofty Parnassan peaks he's climbed and look back in humor; and BE (which continues to improve in my estimation over time) as a look at new times - what has changed and what has not.

For the audience, with its tiers of readers, critics, academics, and p-nut-gallery, another way to rank them looks to Chaucer's criterion of "sentens and solas" - although Chaucer probably didn't invent that, did he? - but anyway, the oeuvre is big and varied, and "fitness for a particular purpose" will vary granularly: what do you need to learn? What do you need comforting from?

Although..... _The Crying of Lot 49_ is also very close to the author's times and places,isn't it?
A-and so is that _Bleeding Edge_!
Did one ignore that because of the protagonists' gender?

And is _Vineland_ a mutatis mutandis expansion of the "Counterforce" passages in _Gravity's Rainbow_ where the lovable Resistance's baked-in flaws aren't supposed to keep us from loving them, but do, for many readers? The notion that one might actually like the characters even more than the ideas and verbiage is one thing Mr Pynchon might have been reaching for, and grasped more firmly in M&D.

One is inclined, before seeking more untruths or inaccuracies, to disavow fitness of this critique for any particular purpose.