new Pynchon, dud

"Yeah, but nowadays it's all you see anymore is cops, the tube is saturated with fuckin cop shows, just being regular guys, only trying to do their job, folks, no more threat to anybody's freedom than some dad in a sitcom. Right. Get the viewer population so cop-happy they're beggin to be run in. Good-bye Johnny Staccato, welcome and while you're at it please kick my door down, Steve McGarrett."

John Nada said it better: BANG!

Least deferential, & most intelligent, review that I've seen is this piece, from the London Review of Books. Otherwise... worst cover-design ever. Absent, the labyrinthine metatextual intrigues. As a pulp pot-boiler, its not a patch even on something like Don Winslow's The Winter of Frankie Machine (tho' Pynchon's scope is less individual psyche than social landscape). Winslow's also has a far more colourful diction; Pychon's hippie patois - and the anti-authoritarian/free lovin' sentiment it ostensibly conveys - is inelegant & reflexive (and who knows: maybe Pynchon reads Winslow? The last time I saw the word < copacetic > in use was this aforementioned novel). Mostly, what it reminds me of is Bukowski's last fiction; something so poorly crafted I still suspect it was ghost-written simply to provide a legacy for his heirs.