so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

The first novel I've read that has made me burst into tears for about an hour afterwards, crying for Slothrop's beautiful disintegration, for the heroic Counterforce that is the whole damn novel, for the scattered and headlong resolutions of those astonishing, damaged characters, all resolved truth by the Rocket's catharsis, for the dreams and the visions, thegenuinely Gnostic harnessing of High Math as religious conduit, for us all, and our comedy in the face of oppression...this would make for the greatest movie of course but only really if done as a ten-hour anime...fuck, this was so much of what is real to me

i kind of want to see it made in the style of 'inglorius basterds'

i mean, whatever. we all read anthony powell down here kid

damn, once a week, that is the most compelling 'reaction' to pynchon i've ever heard. maybe it is time to force myself to read all of this damn book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NBPpM--pY

once a week is ample still otm

:)

Had I but world enough and time
I still wouldn't make it to the end of this book

this would make for the greatest movie of course but only really if done as a ten-hour anime

oh dearie me..

Couple of days ago was @ nu-Foyles - looking for a new book (which they didn't have). There was a guy looking over which Pynchon to buy first. He had a good look at GR but went for Lot 49 instead. I felt the urge to shake him out of it, but you know..

how are you finding nu-foyles xyzzzz__? haven't been in yet. but went in to the old one for the first time since I worked there in the late '90s before it moved and felt it still had the best range and depth of any bookshop in London. hoping move hasn't involved a "rationalisation".

Fizzles its really good - actually been to the coffee shop a couple of times just to read. I think the shop is just as strong in terms of depth as the old one if not more so.

Compare to Waterstones CX where the fiction section is def slimmed down.

waterstones near the university is the only great waterstones in town now, imo

Gower st has an ok 2nd hand section. Reminds me I should go there in August to have a look.

love Gower st – the academic remainders make it for me.

tbh I think the Piccadilly branch is a great browsing bookshop – some really good tables, like the little by-publisher sections in fiction (if they're still there), so that all the NYRB or Dalkey or w/e is together. It's a bit lifestyley and Foyles has better stock for most of the things I care about but it's much improved, nice inviting version of a giant bookshop.

Yeah, had forgotten about the academic remainders, possibly deliberately, as the last couple of times I've been have made me frightened at what I might do when I go back. different thread really.

Gravity's Rainbow has the heft of being The Great Pynchon novel to recommend it as a first read for toe-dippers, but M&D would be my choice for ease of enjoyment.

At this stage I'd have Against The Day only a tiny, tiny smidgen behind GR and miles ahead of anything else I've read (so take this with a pynch of salt). I think it'd make a fantastic introduction, length notwithstanding. Perhaps the way to go would be to read in chronological order of setting :D

this thread is best when people discuss bookshops, not Gravity's Rainbow.

have started to notice that everywhere I get laid, a bookshop closes

the book depository

Really enjoyed this review of GR by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Also there is a talk. C4 journo Paul Mason is a fan!

oh i'm there

rosenbaum review is brilliant. read it a while ago. discovering that my favourite movie writer was a massive pynchon fan basically made my day

Mason's own novel, Rare Earth, is quite enjoyable in a sub-Pynchon way. The Pinefox and myself were talking about going to the Mason event - impromptu ILB FAP?

Looks quite good, revive the thread nearer the time...hopefully I'll be able to attend.

I think I will go.

couldn't find my copy and was thinking about rereading so bought my third copy in 10 years, a $2 used paperback from 1974, and lol @ its flimsy spine being totally pristine: not once in forty years has this book been read

i feel silly when i think about how many times i've started and abandoned this book. probably at least 10. then again i had a similar experience with moby-dick and when i finally did buckle down and read it it became my favorite book in the world for a couple years.

imo you're better off reading ATD or M&D or Vineland

ATD is p much just as good, M&D great but slightly less great, Vineland IDK, need to read

I'm going to that Paul Mason thing, ticket confirmed. Expect to see London ILX there in force

I've attempted to listen to this on audiobook for the sake of speed. Not sure if I'm taking any of it in though.

I gotta say, Paul Morley on Nabokov looks way more like the keeper there

Never really got into this guy, as noted upthread, but am in a contrary mood so maybe it's time to give him another try.

I think Vineland is an entry point if you like something more grounded (bit of a political novel, written (one assumes) around the Reagan years). Also mid-length to the bulky novels. This was a good piece on it:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jul/31/thomas-pynchon-vineland-rereading

Thanks. Either that or Inherent Vice, which that article describes as a prequel of sorts.

Well, it takes place in California as well, and deals with post-hippes. But in that case, Crying of Lot 49 is really the start of a 'California-trilogy' of sorts.

update: the front cover came off around page 150

then again i had a similar experience with moby-dick and when i finally did buckle down and read it it became my favorite book in the world for a couple years.

slothrop's disintegration always reminds me of ishmael's weird fade into invisible omniscience, altho it's not as formally adventurous tbh (and ishmael finds himself again on the other side, to tell the tale)

(, escaped alone to tell thee), rather, idk what children's-illustrated-classics version i was remembering there

http://quarterlyconversation.com/now-playing-at-pynchon-cinemas-whats-going-on-in-pynchons-three-california-novels

^this is is another good piece I came across yesterday - certainly reading GR (and so much Pynchon) as the channel hopper that it is (and now things are evem more like that) is somewhat useful. Spends a lot of time on it, even though it isn't strictly a California novel.

talk was good fun. meeting fizzles, pinefox, stevie tunn was gr8. so so drunk now after a party and on a night bus. anathema on headphones. sudden sense of ending. maybe join in the riotous conversation around me? pynchon finds salvation in chaos maybe

pretentious over rated bloody old rubbish!

Paul Mason was great: so impressive always
Anne Enright I thought thought it was more about her than it was
I still hate GR but impressed by PM's ability to summarize it

Impressed by Imago (?!)'s account of his creative teaching methods at his college.
Thanks for the good friendly vibes last night Imago.
Fizzles, FAP some time?

Later Stevie the Nipper and I met up with someone who was taught by DFW!

yes, this was great! Really like Paul Mason - came out of that wishing there were more prominent, strong, intelligent, anti-establishment voices like this available on TV.

He rehearses and articulates arguments that seem to me absent from TV generally, and perhaps more widely, which in itself results in the impoverishment of public political discourse.

More specifically to the evening, once Ann Enright and Paul M had worked out who was interviewing who, it was very enjoyable. I don't think anything staggeringly new was said about GR - and the point that the below-zero nature of Slothrop's deconditioning means that each piece of V2 desctruction is also a life and love giving action in the darkness could have been made earlier.

However, it was interesting to hear P Mason speak about how the book fit into his high establishment conspiracy of power v hidden resistance model of late 20th C early 21st C world affairs, both existing in the shadows.

Some good questions (inluding imago's - I did feel he kind of pushed the burlesque aspect of Pynchon too far to one side, which was interesting in itself).

Good to see everyone as well - yes pinefox, a FAP would be good!

Anyone seen this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%BCfstand_VII

No gamer but this headline caught my eye.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/27/jonathan-blow-designer-video-games-braid-the-witness

I would eventually like to play this game, which looks like a long pretty variation on Riven, but I think the comparison speaks more to Blow's investment in his own prestige than to the formal properties of his work.

(I'm biased here, but there's a lot of experimental work these days in independent games by women and queers that is equally interesting but that tends not to be discussed in terms of solitary genius.)

braid was not an ungorgeous game, visually, mechanically, but blow's big-ideas thing is kinda tedious. this with its openly puzzle-like puzzles seems a lil more 7th guest than riven (riven is the peak of disguised, environmentally integrated puzzles in graphic adventure games imo, at least before the current revival i'm pretty ignorant of) though obv without all the camp.

feel sorta bad about that tedious thing. really it's just that he's tedious. i don't mean to sneer at the whole premise of trying to unify a game, thematically, in that real poe way, have it be thoroughly about something the way gr is thoroughly about parabolas. of course bomberman and mario 3 (and braid, even without its aspirational probably-about-the-atomic-bomb-wasn't-it? stuff) are as "about" anything as, like, unprogrammatic classical music is. i'm inclined to say that games should concentrate on that kind of meaning over the dense narrative kinds of meaning you find in postmodern literature -- but can imagine immediately being answered by someone arguing that games are in fact the perfect medium for that kind of meaning.

also: is my reflexive preference for riven-style integration and "immersion", puzzles that are of course designed to yield to you just so but which are also designed to mar as little as possible the impression of being in another place designed for another reason, over the abstraction and mechanical selfcommentary of the blow game, escapist and bourgeois

also also this of course is otm and an understatement

but there's a lot of experimental work these days in independent games by women and queers that is equally interesting but that tends not to be discussed in terms of solitary genius

as some of it seems to tend to get lynched.