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Title: He shoulda stayed in college!
Review: There's no such thing as "ice nine," nor could there ever be; "Bokononism" isn't so much a half-baked Buddhism or Taoism as it is a smug excuse for pseudo-enlightened Westerners to laugh at others behind their back; Mona's probably the most "pedestalized" and least realistic woman character I've come across in literature of this pedigree; etc.Take all the pretensions out (those listed above, and the wall-to-wall others) and the propulsive force of the novel ceases to exist. I read this in college and was underwhelmed, to say the least (at the Univ. of Chicago, I might add -- and, while the Common Core science requirements sure were hard, *I* didn't drop out and invent my OWN!). Only later did it dawn on me that the shared "smugness" was part of -- nay, the very CRUX -- of its "appeal."Save your time & money. Read Pynchon's "V." -- published the same year -- instead, and you'll have so many "guns" in your psyche fired you'll be set for life!
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