AN INHERENT SLICE AND DICE

The latest verdict on Pynchon's "Inherent Vice", as sent in an e-mail by a friend (and contributor to this site):

Finished the new Pynchon over the weekend. Not exactly good, but worth inhaling for a bit. I did finish but it was a slog; I feel it's not essential. You could read any 75-100 pages in a row--or maybe not even consecutively--and still get the same amount out of it.

Perhaps the same could be said of nearly any Thomas Bernhard novel? Or any 30-minute stretch of "My Dinner with André"? (Though all 110 minutes are worthy, and especially the last ten.) Reminds me of a friend's experience seeing "Waiting for Godot" on Broadway; during intermission a woman at the bar said, "I came late. What did I miss?"

~ EMILY BOBROW

Picture credit: "My Dinner with André"