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More accessible and more character driven than TP's other novels, this was a blast from start to finish! Compulsively funny and featuring some great crackerjack riffs, if you take the hippie movement and roll it around with a dose of political satire and then throw in some Asian ninja flicks, 80's action B-movies, wacky cartoons, spirituality, (possible extraterrestrials) and more, you kind of get Vineland. It has such crazy goings-on, and yet still carries itself in a realistic fashion, and amazingly, for Pynchon, actually made me feel something deep down inside for certain characters: there is simply more depth to them here: in particular Zoyd & Prairie. Gravity's Rainbow for me is still his best book, but I can't say I felt anything for Tyrone Slothrop. I loved the setting here too, and it just feels right, as an American writer, that Pynchon should return to American soil after the European setting of GR. The way Pynchon takes rival themes dealing with optimism (the way certain instincts survived beyond the backend of the 60s) and pessimism (the sinister authoritarianism of the Bush administration) and holds them in equilibrium throughout should be noted as one of Vineland's biggest strengths, and I'm surprised that hardly anyone would put this in their top three Pynchon novels let alone it being their favourite. 4.5/5