Thomas Pynchon

i never FINISHED V, I guess. i did get maybe 50 pages in at one point in college.

I liked V. and found it rather absorbing... but I had also convinced myself that what turned out to be a one-off minor plot detail was gonna turn out to be way more important in the eventual 'resolution' of the story, and I kept reading and waiting to be proven right

What was it?

i love the bread passage.

i bet mark s says so somewhere here or in another thread but the robot duck is real (historically factual). i already knew that (because of pynchon), but i was surprised today to be reading KANT and find him mention the duck (actually the creator, vaucanson—you would have to remember his name without the footnote that sez 'ROBOT DUCK' to prompt you) in the critique of practical reason!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digesting_Duck

the robot duck is an important point in Hugh Kenner's The Counterfeiters that ppl who like pynchon would prob enjoy, I don't like pynchon really he's just seem like too much for me, but I mean I fell like I'm missing out in a way, in other ways though I feel like I'm dodging a bullet. Can dodging a bullet be missing out?

it's a bullet stuffed with jokes and funny names and ridiculous plot acrobatics, so maybe?

gr really is as gnarly, comprehension-wise, in certain places as its rep suggests, and there's always a period of acclimatizing* yrself to pynchon's style (esp. in mason and dixon, which is kind of the ur-pynchon novel in terms of high prose style take to a limit while still being readable), but as max says the last two doorstops (m&d and against the day) are at heart really long yarns stuffed with wtf incident and jokes that range from sublime and subtle to groaning/laughing despite yrself.

*add this to the -ize thread

so like they're "difficult" but theyre also goofy rube goldbergian gag reels/saturday serials.

I'm gonna be honest and say that the fuckin funny names shit is one of the bigger stumbling blocks for me

well, he's no nicholas sparks on the name front, i'll grant you that.

Marley is a better name than Mucho Ceviche or whatever shit he comes up w/

There was a kinetic art exhibition in London a year or two ago where an artist actually recreated the digesting duck but sadly I never got round to seeing it.

out of all of his books one of my favorite set-pieces is the tatzelwurm part in against the day. and kit in the mayonnaise factory.

the octopus in gravity's rainbow is up there too.

Fuck yeah Al Yankovic

Meantime:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/after-long-resistance-pynchon-allows-novels-to-be-sold-as-e-books/

they gotta lotta spare advertising money over at viking/penguin, it seems.

http://pynchonwiki.com/

i've really tried with pynchon for the year now, but he can't put a sentence together. i like the ideas, the characters, but the grammar is appalling, it's like he runs it back& forth through google translate for maxiumum opacity. nova express or benjamin peret are easier than this creaky dyslexic prose! also for me it's too dependent on knowing characters in gilligan's island / US pop-culture refs. i don't mind such refs, & can guess my way through, but i see an overdependency on them. and the cut & pasted "research" parts people seem so happy to interpret as "erudition" paint pynchon as a crashing bore. so frustrating!

oh, IMO, of course ! just wondering if anyone else finds the "difficulty" in pynchon just parsing his arse-backwards sentences (I should state that I have overall enjoyed what i have read !)

iglu ferrignu from which country do you hail

iglu, you may have hit upon an 'emperor's new clothes' here I suspect. it's not that he "can't write a sentence' - obviously he can; but i do find it frustrating when authors write purposefully awkward sentences that you have to re-read over and over just to understand. especially when a simpler construction would have worked just as effectively. it's just making things difficult for no purpose at all and wouldn't be acceptable in any other sort of prose outside of the novel.

*scales fall from eyes*

haha, this all sounds incredibly naiive. I mean, Pynchon's also equally known for his incredible craft in sentence structuring, so y'know.

You know what would make James Joyce even better? If he wrote tunes the milkman can whistle.

dog latin meet henry james

okay okay, i get it.

i want examples of pynchon sentences which are difficult to parse, it will be a great game because as soon as anyone posts one i will say 'there is nothing difficult to parse about that' and imply they are stupid

you just gotta know how to speak american, how smart is that

i think a lot of his commas are pretty british

otoh a lot of the words in between the commas are american, possibly most of them

i'm, confused

you, never, did

an ex of mine starting reading GR in swedish. important swedish-translation-of-GR intelligence: in swedish, the kenosha kid bit just doesn't make any fucking sense.

"for the PAST year". anyhow...
joyce i can dig, it's musical & even if you don't get (or have time to research/ check footnotes) the refs it scans well. halfway through vineland right now - there's this bit where he coulda said "she left in a lovingly customised muscle car" but he digresses from the action to tell you just what (supposedly) kitschy designs she had sprayed on her particular model of pontiac by which spray shop in which district of town where OMG some crazy dudes get like totally wasted all day long y'dig, man ya ain't 80's cali unless ya lived it, brah. (although "the vomitones" seem totally unbelievable, even as a comic device)
it's like barry gifford extended threefold with a littering of showy & unnecessary (IMO) relative clauses. beckett is easier. i'm still enjoying it (i found mason & dixon easier somehow despite tiresome diatribes on indonesian sauces, unsexy/unkinky kinky sex, etc).
o i'm from teh UK but i do laodsa typos & live in the german territories.

gore vidal made a similar remark in reviewing 'gravity's rainbow' -- that it was like tone-deaf joyce, with no sense of rhythm or music.

No-one would say that Pogo had an inability to have read him up a couple books, in back of this old library which was opened in 1812 by Dr Theodore McInnery, the first Navajo chief to have converted to Christianity after what wasn't not a particular type of peculiar ritual wherein those willin' may well have ingested a couple peyote buttons and dreamed a dream of surfing a riptube in the fountain show at the Bellagio, exiting someplace triangulated Bermudaically, where Barry plays piano, the youth, the excitement, mano a mano. Dr McInnery, then known to most as plain old Runnin River, dreamt that Jesus Christ, our saviour would only afford the future Navajo reservation of 1984 a certain exemption from a compulsory purchase scheme mandated during a dry spell in the Whitehouse under the Ford administration, and favouring the construction company owned by Pogo's estranged great aunt Maude (who had indeed orchestrated that Whitehouse dry-spell by stabling her longhaired hemp steeds at the Hefner household for a couple weeks "R&R") ,if happenstance would indeed permit the planning and construction of a municipal library dedicated unto the good doctor, who subsequently got shot square between the eyes during some military skirmish in french indo-china. plum fell right off his skateboard into the pine box. Pogo mulled over the content of a 1983 spiderman some, and then hit the strip prowlin' for burrito's and sweet hibiscus print bikini clad tail...

i cd really go burrito prowlin right abt now, thanx

that's at least B+ parody material right there

i read one complaint about pynchon that likened his prose style to stand-up comedy, which i think isn't 100% wrong. also vidal's line about 'tone deaf joyce', also not necessarily a bad thing. i don't know. it's not a bug, it's a feature. try drinking a lot of coffee while reading, see if that makes it better or worse. if worse, try beer.

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/18/a_nation_of_truthers/

man this sounds like it would be aces if it weren't written by that guy

an ex of mine starting reading GR in swedish. important swedish-translation-of-GR intelligence: in swedish, the kenosha kid bit just doesn't make any fucking sense.

― thomp, Friday, August 10, 2012 10:04 AM (1 year ago)

(1)

TDY Abreaktionsstation
Spital zur Hl. Veronika,
Bonechapel Gate, E 1
London, England
Winter 1944

An den
Kenosha Kid
Hauptpostlagernd,
Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Geehrter Herr!
Habe ich Sie je im Leben, auch nur ein einziges Mal, belästigt?
Hochachtungsvoll,
Lt. Tyrone Slothrop
Postlagernd,
Kenosha, Wisc., U.S.A.

einige Tage später

Tyrone Slothrop, Esq.
TDY Abreaktionsstation,
Spital zur Hl. Veronika,
Bonechapel Gate, E 1
London, England

Geehrter Herr Slothrop!
Niemals.

Der Kenosha Kid

(2)

Der Kleine Klugscheißer: Mach halblang, Opa, ich kenn doch eure Dielenwärmer, mir ist der «Charleston» unter die Sohle gekommen u-und der «Big Apple» auch!
Der alte Veteranenschwofer: Aber, jede Wette, niemals der «Kenosha», Kid!

(2.1)

K.K.: Sooo'n Bart hat das für mich, der «Castle Walk» und selbst der «Lindy»!
A.V.: Aber, jede Wette, niemals der «Kenosha Kid».

(3)

Kleiner Angestellter: Ja, und seitdem schneidet er mich, und da hab ich mir gedacht, vielleicht ist es wegen der Slothrop-Sache, ich meine, falls er mich da irgendwie für verantwortlich -
Vorgesetzter (herablassend): Sie niemals, der Kenosha Kid hat wirklich andere Dinge im Kopf als…

(3.1)

Vorgesetzter (verblüfft): Sie!? Niemals der Kenosha kid! Hat wirklich andere Dinge im Kopf als…

(4)

Und als jener großmächtige Tag sich verneigte, da Er uns in Flammenschaft all die Worte in den Himmel geschrieben, deren wir uns jemals bedienen würden, die uns noch heute ergetzen und unsere Wörterbücher würden, die uns noch heute ergetzen und unsere Wörterbücher füllen, da ermannte sich der kleine Tyrone Slothrop, unsterblich in Brauchtum und Liedgut, und stellte dem Kid mit piepsiger Stimme diese einzige Frage: «Und warum niemals ‹der›, Kenosha Kid?»
Diese Variationen über die Worte «Niemals der Kenosha Kid» rotieren durch Slothrops Gehirn, als sich der Arzt aus weißer Helligkeit zu ihm herabbeugt, um in zu wecken und mit der Sitzung zu beginnen. Schmerzlos gleitet die Nadel in die Vene seiner Armbeuge: Natrium-Amytal, zehnprozentig, jeweils ein Kubik, wie indiziert.

(5)

Leim aus Lynn oder Kleister aus Cleveland oder Klebstoff aus Oklahoma. Jacke wie Hose. Aber niemals der Kenosha-Kitt!

(6)

(Tag des Aufstiegs, Tag der Opfergaben, das Volk hält ihn heilig. Fette sieden, Blut tropft ins Feuer und verbrennt zu salzigem Braun…) Sie haben das Charlottesville-Schwein erledigt, check, das Forest-Hills-Füllen, check, (leiser werdend) das Laredo-Lamm. Check. Oh-oh. Moment mal. Was haben wir denn hier, Slothrop? Noch niemals ein Kenosha-Witz? Dann aber los, Slothrop!

Steife Latte
Abklaviert,
Zurück in Reih
Und Glied marschiert -
Los geht's Slothrop,

Dafür, Bruder, keinen Schiß -
Ich will Entlassung vom Komiß!
Ab get's Slothrop!

…

Im Schatten, wo Schwarz und Weiß ein Pandamuster auf sein Gesicht malen, dessen Flecke aus wucherndem Narbengewebe zu bestehen scheinen, wartet der Verbindungsmann, den zu sehen er die ganze weite Reise unternommen hat. Das Gesicht ist so schlaff wie das eines Haushundes, und sein Besitzer zucky mächtig die Schultern.
Slothrop: Wo steckt er? Warum zeigt er sich nicht? Und wer sind überhaupt Sie?
Stimme: Den Kind hat man geschnappt. Und mich kennst du sehr wohl, Slothrop. Erinnerst du dich? Ich bin Niemals.
Slothrop (mustert ihn eingehend): An seiner Stelle? (Pause) So hat er also doch, Niemals? Der Kenosha Kid…

Sirs,

You never her.

The Kenosha Kid

Kurt Cobain was apparently inspired to write 'Smells like Teen Spirit' by one of the many ditties in Gravity's Rainbow: "Ah, they do bother him, these free women in their teens, their spirits are so contagious, I'll tell you it's just -out, -ray, -juss, / Spirit is so -con, -tay, -juss, / Nobody knows their a-ges..."

much like i used to compulsively watch ally mcbeal cos i found it so annoying, i read pynchon.
he writes like a ronnie corbett monologue

And it's goodnight from-

Dukkha – The Noble Candle of Suffering
Samudaya – The Noble Candle of the Cause of Suffering
Nirodha – The Noble Candle of the Cessation of Suffering
Magga – The Noble Candle of the Path leading to the Cessation of Suffering

He sparked one up and smirked insouciantly, as he prepared to recount the details of thematically related nob gag he picked up in indonesia, along with a case of distemper so bad he couldn't starts in the bladder and can move up to the base of the tongue, in effect causing it to push against the windpipe. At length, this infectious viral disease causes swelling of the tongue and can eventually lead to suffocation. The effects of blain distemper are thought to be enhanced from excessive rasping of the animal, and also if there is abnormal heat in the stomach.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html

long biographical piece in advance of the new book posted above

cool, enjoyed that, even if it was held together with stick-tape