Thomas Pynchon

good review: of course the best pynchon is always the one i just reread (i will never reread V.) but i have a special fondness for vineland and this piece is good on much of why, its sadness, its kindness (the portrait of zoyd-prairie's father-daughter badinage and affection is lovely, and convinces me that whatever else his set up mystery-man pynchon has a daughter, you read it here first)

but yes, most of all it's so so good at a particular undissolved loyalty to a particular (doomed but potent) political moment, as kissing cousin to (of all things) chris marker's le fond de l'air est rouge. i wasn't at all a red diaper baby (mum and dad were well meaning eco-liberals) but for a time i did have 68er maoist students for baybysitters and recall puzzling over the literature they had lying around, full of the UK version of this season of revolt, pictures and design more deeply affective than the words. somewhere i possibly even have their copy of barbara garson's macbird!, an absurd overwrought evocative fragment of this exact same time -- borrowed to make sense of it (i never made sense of it)

(first performance: STACY KEACH as macbird, amazing)

yes that gets at the deep love I also have for that book, the undying truth of the heart of what drives radical politics, also eloquently expressed in parts of AtD, imo.

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

It's only two or three years since I finally got round to reading Vineland - I remember the opening scenes being terrific and yes the father-daughter relationship being very affecting but the whole thing running out of steam very on.

I guess all his best ideas were going into Mason and Dixon which surely he was writing the whole time he was working on Vineland.

disagree, that is not my experience with it at all, the throughline for me is all about the enduring conflict between the FPS film crew and the Feds. plus, it's way funnier than M&D imo (which I also love, for lots of different reasons.

I've read three TP books and haven't understood any of them nor understood why anyone would like them. I guess that's commitment, of a sort.

Crying, Vineland and M&D, fwiw.

they're funny

Pynchon been on my mind so much recently as the sanest documentarian of how conspiracy theories work on people, and a sanity check marker for me to revisit now as interest in them has migrated from the left to the right. Vineland I read when it came out, and the characters in that book absolutely formed a template for me as I came across later agitprop like 'Underground' or films like Robert Kramer's 'Milestones' (and Mark S OTM about my favorite Marker film and I'd throw in Alain Tanner & John Berger's 'Jonah Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000' as well)

still have not read past Vineland, and the last year does not leave much room left for fiction but it does make me wish I'd already taken in Mason & Dixon

xpost I always send people to Crying first, if that one bounced then no fear. we could use a film version of that around now.

they're funny

midly and occasionally. they mostly make me feel stupid for not finding them more so.

obvsly I'm not saying I'm right and your wrong, I'm just perplexed by it. I saw the film of Inherent Vice and found the fact that a character was called Japonica to be very funny.

that’s another reason people enjoy his books: all the good names

imo Against The Day is the one to start with, yeah it's the longest one but it's completely charming and considerably less cryptic than GR

I really need to read Vineland. Will try to score a copy at some stage

My dumb take on Vineland is that it sits on the leading edge of the contemporary vogue for female action heroes.

I read Vineland 3 years ago and, despite it being a bit uneven, I liked it a lot. It's his most earnest of the ones that I've read (49, GR, Vineland, M&D, IV).

Mason & Dixon is still my favorite. It has such a huge heart.

Crying of Lot 49 was a total blast, I wanted to read it again as soon as I finished it.

Vineland has been staring at me from the top of a stack, think I’ll get to it sooner than later

I bought the Mason and Dixon hardcover new for like 5 bucks in high school cuz it was one of those clearance items in the front of Barnes & Noble. Kinda figured it wasn’t well regarded because of this?

but obviously I was mistaken re:M&D

Me and a friend read M&D at the same time, not sure I would have gotten through it without the outside motivation but very glad I did, his best imo

I read The Crying of Lot 49 a couple of months ago, really liked it. I thought this was an amazing passage coming in 1965 (quoted it on Facebook): "When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah, well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself."

pynchon reading meltzer in crawdaddy :)

A blueprint for Meltzer, anyway (checked, and he started at Crawdaddy in '67).

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.