You are awful (but I like you)

I've finished rerereading V, and I enjoyed it; but I'm wondering what it is I enjoy so much about about Pynchon. In particular I'd have thought the dodgy women bits would put me off. I'm not sure anyone would publish the fate of Mélanie l'Heuremaudit these days, unless in a sort of ironic way like Byatt's Babel Tower, which I disliked. Another book I loved which I shouldn't have was Perez-Reverte's Queen of the South; this is about a drug-dealer and not my usual sort of thing, but it's just seriously brilliant like everything he's ever written. Another one is Julian Rathbone's The Crystal Contract. I like Rathbone even though he's very cheeky in the sort of way which usually annoys me. Read King Fisher Lives; the story is that it failed to win the Booker because Lady Wilson, who was on the panel that year, was disgusted by its immorality and language; it's very brilliant, and extremely memorable in an iconic sort of way.

PS When I wrote this I also forgot Lawrence Durrell. The Alexandria Quartet is great, the Avignon Quintet greater, and actually the latter even has some reasonably-portrayed women in it.