I am around 550 pages into Against The Day and it's my favorite one of his yet, just astonishing. V is the one I can't seem to get into so I'd say you have lots of great reading ahead of you.
― sleeve, Wednesday, 11 May 2011 01:17 (thirteen years ago) link
just opened up lot 49 and its just really annoying
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:21 (thirteen years ago) link
thrice is pretty good!― city of gyros (http://i54.tinypic.com/11l4yvn.gif), Tuesday, May 9, 2006 12:51 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:22 (thirteen years ago) link
an essay on Watts from the 60s
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:28 (thirteen years ago) link
lot 49 is not really annoying
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:41 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah that's why I got it, because I thought I would be able to read a book by him that I wouldn't be bothered by. And I guess I don't really know how to say this well at this point, or maybe I am reading him wrong (ie. reading like 10 pages and throwing the book somewhere so it's not in my hands) but I really fuckin hate how he writes about race
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:47 (thirteen years ago) link
it's weird, when it comes to books I'm not really that sensitive to how authors deal with race and I can overlook a lot, but for whatever reason, in pynchon's writing, I just get really disgusted by him almost immediately
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:49 (thirteen years ago) link
i can understand that in regard to 'v,' which definitely has some problematic stuff in it. i don't remember any race stuff at all in 'lot 49,' tho.
my problem with pynchon is that i kind of hate his sense of humor, at least some of the time.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:52 (thirteen years ago) link
there's really no outward race stuff in lot 49 that warrants my rxn other than how he classifies his characters, I guess it's just something I notice much more in his writing than I do in that of other authors
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:54 (thirteen years ago) link
Against the Day is fun -- the most diverting of his books since Lot 49.
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:57 (thirteen years ago) link
whoops -- I meant Inherent Vice.
hahahaha
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 22:58 (thirteen years ago) link
as reclusive writer dudes go he rates somewhere behind b. traven for me.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 22:58 (thirteen years ago) link
against the day diverts light
did anyone ever actually finish 'against the day'? i read the first 50 pages or so when it came out and even that was pushing it.
i read like three fucking hundred!
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 22:59 (thirteen years ago) link
and still i failed
stansislaw lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub is one of those books that had a profound effect on me, and it is completely paranoid through and though, but there's this resignation in it that I guess gets me through it. That, or I just click with its humor more. Something about how Pynchon deals with paranoia and conspiracy doesn't do much for me for whatever reason. Or rather what it does it just makes me agitated. I understand that these are pretty personal (albeit pretty consistently lodged by others) criticisms aimed at a much-loved author, so sorry for taking an author's thread and being all "it sucks"
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:00 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't remember anything that happened in against the day but i've read more than one rapturous essay that makes me want to try it again. and yet. time's winged chariot.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:00 (thirteen years ago) link
At my friend difficult listening hour's recommendation I got as far as pg. 450 in Mason and Dixon.
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:01 (thirteen years ago) link
Or rather what it does is just makes me agitated xp
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i was touched by this but it was a case for st. jude
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm sort of put off by the style of 'mason and dixon,' i mean i can't even stand to read editions of fielding or sterne without modernized capitalization, et al.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:03 (thirteen years ago) link
i was stunned by how readable and beautiful mason and dixon was just on a technical level. i may have overrated it because of that. i read a lot of it out loud, actually, to myself, which i hardly ever do; lots of it is lovely.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:05 (thirteen years ago) link
Try Mason & Dixon, The Pinefox - it's terrific fun. It has an excellent duck super-robot - I don't see how anyone could resist that! The funniest bit is where Mason is asking a dog about the location of another dog - "Bark if he is to the North" etc. He states after three tries that since the dog has not barked, the dog is clearly stating that the other dog is to the East. Dixon asks him if he is entirely comfortable with his logic.
this kind of makes me want to give it a try, haha.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:05 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm not really a pynchon fan though. i've read everything except vineland and the last two and the only thing i would unreservedly recommend to anyone is the introduction to slow learner, which is one of the best writer-on-writing things i've ever read.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:06 (thirteen years ago) link
mason & dixon also has a scene where they get stoned w/ george washington
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:07 (thirteen years ago) link
which, i mean, that is a pretty obvious joke and also ripped off from dazed and confused, but it's still fun
what's the gist of the writers-on-writing essay?
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:08 (thirteen years ago) link
"Don't attempt long, difficult novels with Fielding-esque prose until your reputation as an eccentric recluse is firmly established."
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:09 (thirteen years ago) link
my fav writer on writing thing is stevenson's essay on writing treasure island (My First Book) but I did like the intro to slow learner when I read it in a library
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:10 (thirteen years ago) link
the robot duck subplot has a scene where the world's greatest chef is called in to deal with the robot duck, and when he modestly insists that he knows nothing about ducks, robespierre or whoever is like "but what of your canard du casserole? your canard au pamplemousse flambe?, and the chef blushes and says OH THOSE OLD CANARDS
book is weirdly like early woody allen
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:10 (thirteen years ago) link
i like the slow learner intro a lot too. it's weirdly charming and unexpected that he calls 'on the road' one of the greatest american novels, or somesuch.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:15 (thirteen years ago) link
alfred:
Displacing my personal experience off into other environments ... part of this was an unkind impatience with fiction I felt then to be "too autobiographical." Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyonek nows, is nearly the direct opposite. Moreover, contrary evidence was all around me, though I chose to ignore it, for in fact the fiction both published and unpublished that moved and pleased me then as now was rpecisely that which had been made luminous, undeniably authentic by having been found and taken up, always at a cost, from deeper, more shared levels of the life we all really live. I hate to think that I didn't, however defectively, understand this. Maybe the rent was just too high. In any case, stupid kid, I preferred fancy footwork instead.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:22 (thirteen years ago) link
ugh sorry about the typos
I thought those were part of his advice to young writers.
― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:23 (thirteen years ago) link
essay is enjoyably harsh:
The next story I wrote was "The Crying of Lot 49," which was marketed as a "novel," and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until then.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:28 (thirteen years ago) link
i think the autobiographical thing is true though: you get snotty about Mere Autobiography and Lack Of Imagination, and repeat things nabokov says about the writer creating an imaginary hermetic universe for the mandarin reader to play in, and then one day you wake up and realize that every nabokov book is about a sad european emigre who thinks about pale nipples a lot
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:31 (thirteen years ago) link
please note though that while i am talking about myself here i only realized this several years after reading the pynchon essay, from which, at the time, i only managed to take what i already knew.
― difficult listening hour, Monday, 6 June 2011 23:34 (thirteen years ago) link
i like pynchon's sense of humor! he is... "weird" on race. i dont know, im not an expert, ive only ready crying and gravity's rainbow.
― ☂ (max), Monday, 6 June 2011 23:55 (thirteen years ago) link
it took me like six months but im pretty sure i loved it.
both Mason & Dixon and Against The Day have a really difficult first third to get through, it took me multiple attempts to get through those first 300 or so pages for both books. Once they get going though, both are amazing. My two favorite Pynchon novels.
― peter in montreal, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 02:23 (thirteen years ago) link
mason & dixon is not worth it, i don't think. against the day, inherent vice, gravity's rainbow, v, all are worth it. haven't tried vineland on (bad) recs
― remy bean, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 02:33 (thirteen years ago) link
thinking I should write a dissertation on pynchon and race
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 7 June 2011 02:35 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't remember any race stuff in 49...and he's always seemed kind of immature about matters like that. his sense of humor is kind of borderline MAD magazine in Rainbow, frankly.
― akm, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 03:27 (thirteen years ago) link
still reading Against The Day and it is still so goddamn good I can't even really believe it, the best writing I've read in a decade maybe? I mean, there are just these constant tossed-off paragraphs of brilliance or random historical erudition every 5 or 6 pages.
― sleeve, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 03:31 (thirteen years ago) link
p. 619 btw
― sleeve, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 03:32 (thirteen years ago) link
Never thought about it like MAD Magazine. I was a regular reader as a kid (even Cracked on occasion), and I enjoy Pynchon's sense of humor. That's what got me hooked on reading him in the first place, weirdly enough.
― Spectrum, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 03:37 (thirteen years ago) link
to be honest I think I made that comparison becaues the few pictures of Pynchon he looks like Alfred E Newman.
But, he does have a pretty slapstick sense of humor. Like that story in V. about the kid with the screw in his bellybutton that he played with and his ass fell off.
― akm, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 04:45 (thirteen years ago) link
Seriously found Against The Day to be more gripping/easier to read than several other Pynchon novels (esp V). I remember it as a real page turner, though I haven't read it since it came out. I think I struggled more with Mason and Dixon, actually (although it wasn't a struggle per se).
― toby, Tuesday, 7 June 2011 05:35 (thirteen years ago) link