One thing got left out of my last post ("Inherent Vineland") because I couldn't figure out exactly how to express it. I was trying to explain the objective reason that things like the Godzilla footprint in Vineland are less valid and more annoying than, for example, the amorous mechanical duck in Mason & Dixon.

This difficulty is not going to be solved by changing the sentence structure, I discovered, because the real problem is that the basic premise is not true.

There is, on the other hand, a basic difference between the Godzilla footprint, which serves no purpose other than to amuse the author, and the various mentions of Lemuria in Inherent Vice, which actually tie into and support the basic themes of the book. But the Godzilla footprint and the amorous mechanical duck are pretty much of a piece, and the only difference is that by the time I got to the former I was already finding the whole book somewhat annoying (though also enjoyable in parts), and by the time I got to the latter (quite far into M&D), I was already completely hooked.

That's the only difference. As Johnny Carson used to say, "Buy the premise, buy the bit."

This all applies, of course, to what I do, since there are a few magical realist elements in my writing (mostly in the novels, not so much in the mystery stories). So, there's Vicki, and Randi, and a couple of others. And I think that in most cases how readers react to them is going to be determined by how they're reacting to the whole thing. And, secondarily, on whether I'm maintaining consistent rules of how things work and who can do what and so on. Superman is very powerful, for example, but if he can suddenly become invisible, or raise the dead, or read minds, most people would either get annoyed or start to lose interest. Same thing if Wolverine could suddenly fly, or write PHP code, or play the harpsichord.