Instruct: Classify the given review as either positive or negative.
Query: There's homage to Pynchon, and then there's aping Pynchon

Reading this collection brought to mind a review I once read of a film, a paraphrasing of which best sums up this work: this is such a close copy of Thomas Pynchon that it's not plagarism, it's quotation. The extended fugue on Jack Lord and "Hawaii Five-O" in the last story ("Westward...") could've been lifted directly from "Vineland". Overall, the world-weary hipness and extended verbal (literal?) arabesques wore me out. At least Pynchon was genuinely funny, at intervals.