Thomas Pynchon, "Vineland"

Nearly finished my first read of this, and I find it weirdly moving on a personal level - even having been born in 1977 - I'm reminded somehow of lots of people I knew earlier in life. (The DL/Frensi parts and Che/Prairie parts have a particular resonance with two friends whose lives have drifted/diverged from my own, and the friendships seem to mirror one another in a way.) Surprised at how, well, easily digestible this has been in comparison to Lot 49.

what do others think?

Love all of Pynchon's books, but always felt this one never got it's due. I'm not very good at articulating why I like it, but it seems like his most compassionate book. It also gives me a sense of nostalgia, even though my life and background is nothing like any of the characters in the novel.

yeah! that's a great way of putting it. and i love the sort of gratutious run-on sentences ending some chapters, where he reaches out beyond the characters at hand and ropes in little phrased vingettes of stuff happening near by. so... poetic, i guess.

From Rushdie's NYT review of Vineland:

"Other things, too, have remained constant in the Pynchonian universe, where these are days of miracle and wonder, like ''Doonesbury'' written by Duke instead of Garry Trudeau, and the paranoia runs high because behind the heavy scenes and bad trips and Karmic Adjustments move the shadowy invisible forces, the true Masters of the Universe, ''the unrelenting forces that leaned ever after . . . into Time's wind, impassive in pursuit, usually gaining, the faceless predators . . . [who] had simply persisted, stone-humorless, beyond cause and effect, rejecting all attempts to bargain or accommodate, following through pools of night where nothing else moved wrongs forgotten by all but the direly possessed, continuing as a body to refuse to be bought off for any but the full price, which they had never named.'' "

i remember reading that review and feeling smug that rushdie hadn't noticed that vineland was the cyberpunk novel pynchon was rumoured to be working on

love this book. just bought a first edition. well, possibly a first edition. it says first edition but it's missing a number line. it's probably not a first edition. but i tell myself it is.

Feels like the other half of Inherent Vice a little bit. Now I've finished that, have to go back and read this.

vineland shares characters with inherent vice (scott oof!)

i finally just reread it (last in a big reread jag) and really enjoyed it -- for its mood and generosity, as much as anything… i'm p sure i enjoyed the first time round, though i'd remembered almost nothing from it… weakest element is frenesi's thing for brock vond, maybe: the narrative likes frenesi (despite everything) and hates vond, and somehow he doesn't get the reality of their connection across (which is odd, seeing as GR also traded in this dynamic? but maybe gender-switched?)

my big biographical takeaway is that TP has a daughter, and some of this relationship is sketched into zoyd's with prairie (which is hugely affectionate sketched, and probably a lot of the reason i like it)

dude. pta movie?

has anyone read this one

I bought it the day it came out and read it in a day. I reread it a few years ago. It's a solid book, but as his first book after Gravity's Rainbow it struck me as extremely lightweight and fairly disappointing. Like, "It took you 17 years to write this?"

xp Has that been confirmed? Thought it was still conjecture.

stoked for the godzilla scenes

Also being discussed here Paul Thomas Anderson: C or D?

I love this book so much, I think it's way better than GR

stoked for this

You can read a 400-page book in one day? Wish I could.

(xp to jimbeaux)

I read that one. I was in New York for a short vacation, I bought it at the bookstore, read it on the plane back to Denver, and finished it after I got home. It's not the most challenging 400 pages.

I thought PTA's adaptation of Inherent Vice was pretty good, given the challenges of bringing Pynchon's prose to a film.

agreed

Went to see Inherent Vice with a bunch of friends and I was the only one who enjoyed it. Seems odd for PTA to go back to the same well but I'm sure it'll be fun. I haven't read this one but might as well now.

Looked at one way, it's Lebowski without the jokes.

I bought it the day it came out and read it in a day. I reread it a few years ago. It's a solid book, but as his first book after Gravity's Rainbow it struck me as extremely lightweight and fairly disappointing. Like, "It took you 17 years to write this?"

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

i thought he spent most of that time writing mason and dixon (and smoking tremendous quantities of weed) and vineland was just a book he could finish, because sometimes you just gotta finish something, _anything_.

lol I want to believe

love them both unconditionally

jimbeaux read it in one day bcz pynchon wrote it in one day

Looked at one way, it's Lebowski without the jokes.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, January 31, 2024 12:33 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

without???

On the one hand, Vineland is the slightest Pynchon. On the other hand, it is the most prescient, real, and heavy Pynchon.

there are a lot of really classic passages in it abt the activist life iirc, I def used to have pages marked

there's one scene where Frenesi is watching film they recorded and it waxes lyrical

about the emotions and truths revealed by the light, the gestures on film

The passage near the end about the pre-fascist twilight just being the light coming from a million TVs is incredible.

The Master, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread -- what a sequence.

Seems odd for PTA to go back to the same well

I didn't know until recently that The Master was partially inspired by Pynchon's V.

Did not know that, but I guess it kind of makes sense, although my memories of V are extremely hazy.

It's been 30 plus years, the scene that stays with me is the nose job.