Thomas Pynchon

The Pinefox, do you like any PoMo fiction? I know you are a big Joyce fan (haha though a pal of mine wrote his thesis on Blake and has found him unreadable since, so maybe I'm wrong), and I have known some fans of Modernism's peaks who really dislike anything that's very Postmodern.

In general I don't like talking about things as PoMo; if I loved anything I would probably not call it PoMo. Nonetheless, there are some things that might get called PoMo that I like. I have a lot of time for CL49, and a lot of respect for DeLillo. I like at least a bit of Barth, though I am yet to be fully convinced re. the vaunted Barthelme. But you may be meaning sth much more way-out than that.

Although the line between Modernism and Postmodernism is hard to draw (Beckett is a rewarding study here, I think), there is an important difference in the attitude towards meaning, in particular. I've found that some admirers of the former are annoyed and frustrated by what they see as frivolity and emptiness in much PoMo fiction, in its abandonment of the search for and belief in suitable new metanarratives - I'm wondering if that might be how you feel, because combining that with Pynchon's encyclopaedic ambition and scale (partucularly in GR) might exacerbate the annoyance that might cause.

I think there is a smugness to Pynchon's writing too, something I see in quite a few writers of (more or less) his generation, a former-hippy-youth's overconfidence in the rightness of their reading of the world, particularly in ideological terms - it's an impression that has turned me away from Tom Robbins, for instance, who I used to really like a lot. Barth has some of this, but his obvious idolising of great past storytellers, an almost fannish, childlike adoration of and reverence for paradigms such as Homer and Scheherezade, soften that hugely, for me. Anyway, I mention that about Pynchon because these things, particularly in combination, might easily cause a very serious-minded Modernist to feel exactly what you expressed in your "awkwardly pretentious and horribly obnoxious" comment upthread.

this is a long term deal and more to my benefit obv. ha

Martin S: one (main?) thing I don't like about GR = too much sex. As I have said before, GR = post-hippy James Bond [etc etc, as I have said before, etc etc].

I think Pynchon can Write but I don't think I feel the gain in his relative unclarity.

yeah, other people who get it on in gr: roger and jessica, pirate and scorpia mossmoon, katje and blicero and what's his name, katje and BRIGADIER PUDDING even jesus, enzian and blicero, a bunch of people on thanatz's yacht, er leni pokler a bit I think (but does FRANZ POKLER ever get any? hmm), and uh...

of course all along (many of those happen sort of episodically), slothrop keeps on having secret agent sex after the london part of the book is over: katje, geli tripping, the actress, the girl on thanatz's yacht, trudi and whatsername at saure's place, and I'm sure there are more. plus he has uh amorous encounters with more people, incl some girls at the hermann goering, the spa where marvy chases him, the red cross girl or whoever, the PIG briefly...

This paper kind of deals with these issues, in a rather-too academic fashion.

This masculinist gigantism can is by no means self-evidently pro-feminist. Gravity's Rainbow often reads like a male fantasy gone out of control: the phalli are a little too large, the female characters too eager to bed down with Slothrop, the victims of sadists far too eager about their own pain.7 And because the narrative doesn't offer final readings, it is never quite clear how much really is mockery or disruption and how much is the residue of real assumptions about gender. These exaggerations self-consciously invite a feminist critique, from an outsider's perspective. But the novel itself does not supply that critique; it can only inflate or dislocate the discourses of its own crimes, and so at once gesture to a newly written self and reduplicate an old and tiresome one.

I think it's a good thing that, although I have seen mention of, I have never read about pynchon here.

"well, no, i usually, uh-" this is embarrassing for perdoo, it's like being called on to, to justify eating an apple, or even popping a grape into your mouth- "just, well, sort of, eat them... whole, you know"

I finished Gravity's Rainbow yesterday. I wondered exactly how to express my reaction, or opinion. The more I wondered, the more my reactions threatened, or promised, to alter.

I shouldn't exaggerate that last point, though.

Some day I would like to take, or make, some room to say, and possibly also discover, some of what I think of the book.

Depsite much pynchon-love coming from Joel and other people I think highly of, I just can't get into Pynchon.

Have read crying a couple of times and enjoyed it lots. I'm thinking its a cousin to PKD's 'Three stigmata of palmer eldritch' so that means its great.

I was shocked by how conventional they are. I didn't like 'Atrophy' that much despite its reputation and really dug that one about the guy who runs off with the garbage man.

My bad.

FWIW, Sam, I much prefer that other crazy literary recluse guy.

Where Slothrop gets horny, bombs drop. Now, a study of the Herero.

That may contain the germ of a defence, as well as the outline of a rejection.

The second is to look at all other sections as self-contained -- like an obliquely connected collection of short stories.

To understand how it all connects, let x represent the number of times you read it. Then let x approach infinity.

alt. as a set of symbol systems (zodiac tarot jungian etc.) mapped onto one another and an investigation into the moralism of ways of knowing and meaning.

Another problem I have is that I tend to read very quickly - sometimes skim-reading - and that's just not something you can do with GR, is it?!

I'm going back to it again this weekend, to start from the beginning again. Wish me luck!

Yah!

xyzzzz, thanks for that link. The description of Laiseca sounds so much like Pynchon! Very interesting and now I want to read it but don't speak or read spanish :(

Quite a few ambitious works are being translated btw. This is out Match next year.

https://dalkeyarchive.store/products/the-garden-of-seven-twilights

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-12-14/the-huntington-library-acquires-papers-of-thomas-pynchon

Huntington Library is an awesome place and perfect for Pynchon. Really interesting that the archive will include his research materials - could be illuminating.

love this. huntington really is the right place.

A few have talked about Solenoid as the highly ambitious work on a Pynchonesque scale. Eng translation has been issued. I will have a go at it.

Mircea Cărtărescu’s “brilliant, clear and disquieting prose….fills you quite immediately with a desire to explore a world that seems to be collapsing”

Read @SaraheKornfeld’s full review of “Solenoid” (tr. Sean Cotter) here:https://t.co/crAUuYGybV@DeepVellum #LARreviews pic.twitter.com/Bg47GMSW7L

— Los Angeles Review (@LAReview) December 14, 2022

Lovely news to see indeed -- Pynchon and Butler, what a combo alone!

The best novel ever written by an ex-CIA operative (unless Pynchon is ex-CIA, which he might be).

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 22, 2023

If he was, it surely only served to sharpen his criticism of historical and contemporary US foreign policy

DeLillo has more big spook energy.

Libra presumably an expose rather than a speculation

whenever this thread is revived I worry that he's dead. how old is he by now anyway?

86 I think

there's a signed edition of Mason and Dixon on Ebay for $24k.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/274765041981?hash=item3ff945d13d:g:B7oAAOSwQWBdfQkd&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4NQNcS8Q0SfQmzO0180rdkEA3JX4lSWkw5TA7yzzANIQk8pUsHcXQs8FzKvlDWMLPHJePYglAPUC093VvGVN68JYxmebKgweiZ8Nbcw5r5XNmSffetYZxis45gH8G%2FfrPxRsxto3SCtzlSp1kA%2FFtpyf5Q0241JFXIjigK74en2DIdcCmj2hJ0zoRKRw6G%2Fvc7pfVR3LWO0QInO5m7tckigFGMBRoe2cUdDELt0miJWdXDFcNtpPjIsrD5S4PqlPUjKYygYfT%2B1sHP0efqct3wR4Yr3Y5amrbKlkoeg3pOqf%7Ctkp%3ABlBMUOq9tu3XYg

I’ve seen signed Salinger and Pynchon titles go for between $10k and $30k. You can see some more on Abebooks

He's actually been dead since 1974. The books written by "Thomas Pynchon" after that point have actually been written by Irwin Corey.

i've held on to a signed Infinite Jest first edition in the hope that it would hit those heights but alas they seem to go for around 4k; he's dead but he wasn't exactly a recluse. If I don't get a job at some point I'll probably have to let it go.

i found a hilarious reddit thread from a european investigator who followed old men all over new york wondering if they were pynchon. he may or may not have snapped a picture of the back of him going into the building they confirmed as a residence of pynchon's wife. I just like to imagine old guys in NY getting accosted by a swede asking "are you thomas pynchon?" and their bewildered eyes

that's amazing

I vaguely know Elvis Buñuelo and I read *Mating* at his behest. Amazing novel.

xxxpost best novel by an ex-CIA agent: might be those by pen names ov Paul Linebarger, though I haven't yet read any (though omg the shorter fiction)

re: Linebarger, the short fiction is amazing and stands up today. if anything only more prescient on e.g. animal liberation. nonfictionwise, Psychological Warfare is sitting on my desk but I haven't cracked it yet.

best by ex-CIA probably deserves its own thread. Frank Herbert seems obvious but afaict he genuinely was not affiliated.

Don't forget Harry Mathews