so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

I think Roberto Rodriguez would do a fab job, maybe with particularly surreal sections either by Pixar or rotoscope-style (or both!)

pynchon really needs an action director for the most part, and a straight-up genre director in general.

Is this book anything like 'O Lucky Man'?

I have to say the X-Treme enthusiasm for this over the entire history of ILX has made me not want to read it, ever.

Not being funny, but y'know O Lucky Man is a re-working of Candide, right? GR does have elements of them in it, come to think of it. I understand what you mean about being off-put, but I think it's beautiful and like most big beautiful books best approached as a quilty wonderland to get lost in rather than as a code to break or a mountain to climb.

richard kelly

sorry, coen brothers suck. who could be this funny and amazing? no one. leave it as a fucking book for once.

Noodle Vague OTM re "quilty wonderland"

yes! why some things should never be film adapted unless they are something completely different

Could work as an ongoing prime time soap opera style serial though, 30 mins a week in perpetuity. And I still think an animated version might work.

totally, anything serial or genre. animated would be amazing but crazy. graphic novel?

There is some German film based on (bits of) GR. It also features Robert Forster out of the Go Betweens! Trailer is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ046SJpl8E

"as per leslie fiedler there is little difference, generically, between sex porn and horror-porn"

huh well even for leslie fiedler that's cracky

-

i haven't reread this book in like almost two years! this makes me sad.

malcolm mcdowell would be the best of all possible slothrups

leave it as a fucking book for once.

generally, i agree with this sentiment. but i think the narrative of GR is one of the most brilliant and beautifully crafted things i have ever read. i would love to see it in visual form. preferably while pynchon is still alive and is willing to work on it. most likely that will never happen.

there's always the opera, which he technically agreed to

coogan?

x post

He only agreed for the opera if it was entirely scored for kazoo

Banjo, I think.

It is now almost exactly 5 years since I finished this book. I hope it has improved a bit in that time.

Or maybe you have?

I thought it was ukulele; I wonder if the whole story is actually apocryphal.

I am quite impressed that the pinefox finished this book, considering his distaste for it.

more & more I think certain aspects of its reputation are unearned, but also unaimed for � aspects which help it maintain a kind of cachet without helping readers or potential readers read it better, or read anything else

I tend to change my mind twice about whether any novel of P.'s is any good at least twice during the course of a reading. I have decided to reread Against The Day next, but only if I see the American edition somewhere.

Though uke and kazoo are both plausible, according to LA herself it was banjo:

http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/anderson/ander_transcript.html

Well already I'm very pleased with the nonchalant approach to the absurd evident in Pynchon's writing-style. I've heard it scales astonishing heights of intense and comic intricacy. Sounds fab. Will get on the case as soon as I get home tomorrow.

-- Just got offed, Wednesday, 13 August 2008 17:33 (2 weeks ago) Link

robert downey jr gains 40 pounds and plays slothrop, please

took me like five months but i finally finished it

sounds like it was a chore for you

shit i need to do this

it would probably be in my top 10 favorite books.

congrats max, i couldn't even get all the way through the crying of lot 49 ;_;

lol xp

i read the first 10 pages last summer and they were great...but then i just stopped...i've not been in the habit of reading novels since graduating, and now i actually don't have the time to even if the urge struck

but this in every way sounds like the kind of thing i'd go nuts for

crying of lot 49 is nowhere near as good as GR or M&D or IV imho

I have as yet to finish M&D. I'm not sure why it felt like such a struggle - maybe it was the historical period and subjects it tackled.

no, it wasnt a chore, but the last 150 pages were kind of tough going for me

i was proud of myself for being able to follow what was happening, more or less

<3 V & GR, sorta underwhelmed by crying of lot 49, loathed M&D to the point of never wanting to read any new pynchon ever

erm, even if the urge *strikes*, that should be. anyway after i finish my MA i swear to every mod on ilx that i will read this mfing novel next summer

we will have a parade in your honor, complete with animated penguin gifs

octopus master of ceremonies

anyway max dude you read the best authors, plz be my pending lit guru, i want you to check on my pynchon and nabokov intake come this time next year with all the assiduity of a coroner, que and velko and sarahel can play too

tbh all i really read is "postmodern fiction" and scandinavian crime novels

and hp lovecraft

i'm trying to remember the last novel i read - i think it was The Financier by Theodore Dreisser. It wasn't all that great, but I did learn about puts, calls, short selling, and various other stock market products, that apparently existed in some form even back then.

crying of lot 49 is nowhere near as good as GR or M&D or IV imho

Interesting. I've read L49 and I am observing IV cautiously from afar. Just read an ambiguous review of it (Bookforum) that had to defend its unsatisfactory aspects as really intentional and the whole point.

is richard powers the kinder gentler pynchon? is he a better writer than pynchon?

did you read james wood's review of richard powers?? i think he would disagree w/ you. it was pretty brutal

still haven't read richard powers. and i've had a copy of 'time of our singing' hanging around since, like, 2003.

He's kindler and gentler, but that's about it.

I don't see much similarity at all between Powers and Pynchon other than perhaps that both write long, ambitious novels. Powers is rather literal-minded, sober, respectable - Pynchon is much the opposite with his wild and woolly prose, love of bad puns, shaggy-dog tangents, and general apathy towards the constraints of realism.

what was tough going about the last 150 pages for you? it's tough going for slothrop too, i guess :/