Thomas Pynchon

someday we oughta do a group read of GR or something else. the pynchon list is good for that except that it's full of cranky knowitalls who have been on the list for 10 years.

(stab at ile suppressed ha ha)

oh, umm, classic, anyway.

I don't think I've ever reread a book. Is there enough time? I'd worry too much about the stuff that I was missing out on.

Now---

Took me 2 and a half years to get through GR. Bits of it were brilliant, bits of it were impenetrable. I persevered, but haven't managed to finish another novel since. I think it killed fiction as an enjoyable pasttime for me.

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.

yes i know

but it does seem kinda meltzerish

maybe not mean enough

When I posted on FB, I compared it to Sheffield's Beatles book.

The band, the Paranoids, they were good too; reminded me of one of those fake bands you'd see at the time on The Flintstones or The Munsters.

Someone deceived me. Thomas Pynchon is alive and well. I apologize.

— Louise Glück (@PoetLouiseGluck) February 16, 2021

^^^this better still be so

meanwhile checking in on my reread-it-all ratings:

i actually spoiled GR for myself by doing too mch back-reading (maybe also by rereading it too often): it's probably now slipped right down to my list

least favourite still always V. (which is just too beat generation for me)

i'd need to reread the last three for this to be definitive (AtD took me ten years -- with several interruptions and restarts) but i think my current order is

M&R
AtD
VL
BE
IV --- need to reread this as the actual sequel to VL
GR
CL49
V

― mark s, Saturday, 19 November 2016 00:19 (five years ago) bookmarkflagline

AtD: currently my favourite, tho this always kinda just means the one i read most recently
M&D: i think his best and deepest -- i love that it's abt america just before the revolution (he must have just shouted w/glee when he discovered in pre-novel research that one of M&D stayed in the UK and one emigrated) (tracer tells me THE SOTWEED FACTOR is also abt america just before the revolution, so i guess i shd read that
VL: very fond of this, it's the one where he learnt to do affection between characters and i prefer him like that -- tho it leaves brock vond a weak reed (like he forgot how to do villains)
BE: getting a raw deal here -- his "novels of times as they are now" (this, VL and CoL49) are always full of alert observation, and i think there's tons here that's (a) accurate and (b) not in any other novels -- need to reread, maybe disenchantment will kick in (ie my allergy to cyberpunk -- as i was reading it i was thinking "i much prefer this to gibson")
IV: re the film (which i liked) even quite smart ppl seem to go with "who needs another big lebowski?" -- well i hate big lebowski, who needs even one, IV isn't a bit like it… book is lowish mainly bcz i'm a tiny bit allergic to marlowism
GR: putting it here looks challopsy -- and i think you can find me raving abt it on early ilx (s.clover will remember) -- but i honestly read this once too many times (8 or 9) and just have no will to, again; this surprised me too (it has great set-pieces of course)
CoL49: superb as a second novel by a young writer, several great set-pieces and startling ideas*, like VL and BE a "novel of times as they are now" (fun to read alongside didion) but his inexperience sentence-making shows now and then, several of the characters don't really work (for example the paranoids), and i always felt tripped up and let down by its brevity
V.: a handful of scenes i still remember from reading it first and only time c.1981, but i also have an allergy (much larger this time) to beatnikery and this i remember as rancid with it >:( never tried to reread it, i know i probably should
SL: bleh, there's really nothing much here (his intro essay is quite funny)

*the man's face on the stamp transfixed with fright and horror

― mark s, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 22:49 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

not much to add: i did actually start a (tenth?) GR reread a couple years back and this time beached but i think that was mainly pandemic depression: i hardly managed to read anything in 2020 or 2021 -- my impression (i was trying a superclose read for once where i actually decode everyt sentence instead of just skipping it) is that i'm not as smart as i was when i first read it or else just less inclined to believe my own bullshit lol. i think -- since ppl were discussing it on the novels-unfinished thread -- that despite being short CL49 is one of the tougher TPs, partly bcz his attitude to the characters is at best enigmatic (if he loves em he's not showing it). maybe BB is overranked here? -- but i was unpersuaded by much of the critical disappointment (dudes he always gets that). anyway i shd reread; and AtD also of course

Glad to see some Bleeding Edge appreciation on here.

I have less than 50 pages to go in AtD. Love some parts (beginning, Colorado sections) and feel blessed to have 1100 pages of Pynchon, but it is overstuffed. M&D remains #1 for me.

not! long! enough!

(it took me ten years to finish)

did we know that his full name is "Thomas Ruggles Pynchon"

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.

👍

Surprised to see the low rating for Slow Learner - I think The Secret Integration is one of the loveliest things he ever wrote.

Shamefully as a dedicated TRP fanboi I am still not even halfway through Against the Day ;_;

I had seen his full name before because I have read his wikipedia page many times, but I don't think I ever followed the link to his ancestor William Pynchon, and saw the Pynchon coat of arms
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/COA_William_Pynchon.svg/800px-COA_William_Pynchon.svg.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoGaSWzWMAYFCK0.jpg

This would be a fun Nobel Prize surprise.

also, it is so so so West Coast, I love that about it

― sleeve

Maximalism’s Big Daddy. His novels, in which entropy reigns supreme, are dense and complex and uncover the murky and incongruous mechanics of life, but without providing a single answer. Authors like him only come once in a lifetime. Award the 2022 Nobel Prize to Thomas Pynchon. pic.twitter.com/2BVzmoNJTA

— Luis Panini (@TheLuisPanini) October 3, 2022

Hey take it over to the Great Real Names thread, M. Panini!

A game on this site was trying to find an author who was as wild as Pynchon. I really liked this piece of Laiseca, the novel hasn't been translated but it does sound wild.

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/manuel-antonio-castro-cordoba-on-laiseca/

I read Mason & Dixon this year and it was lovely

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