Thomas Pynchon

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.

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

Against the Day is fun -- the most diverting of his books since Lot 49.

whoops -- I meant Inherent Vice.

hahahaha

as reclusive writer dudes go he rates somewhere behind b. traven for me.

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!

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"

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.

At my friend difficult listening hour's recommendation I got as far as pg. 450 in Mason and Dixon.

Or rather what it does is just makes me agitated xp

At my friend difficult listening hour's recommendation I got as far as pg. 450 in Mason and Dixon.

i was touched by this but it was a case for st. jude

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.

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.

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.

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.

mason & dixon also has a scene where they get stoned w/ george washington

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?

"Don't attempt long, difficult novels with Fielding-esque prose until your reputation as an eccentric recluse is firmly established."

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

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

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.

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.

ugh sorry about the typos

I thought those were part of his advice to young writers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

thinking I should write a dissertation on pynchon and race

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.

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.

p. 619 btw

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.

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.

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).

There's a quite good essay on MAD as the progenitor of McSweeney's in an early N+1: http://nplusonemag.com/regressive-avant-garde.

An urgent & key text on Pynchon and race is The Secret Integration, I woulda thunk - not particularly immature for an early short story.

Think I will have another crack at AtD when/if it ever becomes available for kindle in the UK. Just started Infinite Jest this way and I'm finding it so much easier to read without having to lug the cumbersome hardback around with me.

I think the earlier sections of Against The Day crack along quite nicely - the Chums of Chance, Merle & Dally (that section is so so lovely), the Western chapters. It helps that Pynchon is playing with children's genres, to an extent, there. The bit that drags is the lengthy section in the Balkans in the build-up to WW1, but it's worth slogging through that for the ending.

Mason & Dixon is wonderful, probably my favourite novel ever.

gravity's rainbow is still my favorite, but against the day is awesome, reaching sublime crescendos that gesture toward contemporary concerns, orange alerts and so forth ~

It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day.

inherent vice is sitting on a shelf, waiting for me eventually, after the ask, and mao ii, and the age of innocence, and how bluegrass music destroyed my life and the beggar maid. . . . sort of putting it off, because then there's no more new pynchon to read

er, anybody know where i can buy n+1 magazine in london?

i'd love to subscribe but the postage alone is more than the cost of the magazine..

LRB bookshop? They've just started doing electronic editions in mobi format also...

or maybe foyles?

will try both, thanks!