Preview of Vineland Summary:

In Vineland, Pynchon again uses the themes of entropy, conspiracy, and the quest. The title of the book is a reminder that the new world that Leif Erickson found long before Columbus was called Vinland, a place green with plenty and rich in natural resources.

That land has been replaced with freeways, industrial parks, and shopping malls, and where people used to look with wonder at a fecund natural world (still present in Northern California, where much of the action takes place in a town called Vineland), they now look at — television. Not only do the characters in this book spend a lot more time looking at television than do the other characters in Pynchon's books in which this activity is possible (V., 1963, and The Crying of Lot 49, 1966), but often they seem to be acting out a life they have seen on television. Since they do have...