for Pynchon fans -- advice please

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I suppose I was equating the conpiratorial points in Ps books as something borne out of a deep cynicism.

xyzzzz__, Monday, 21 November 2016 17:34 (seven years ago) link

i know, i think that's wrong though

mark s, Monday, 21 November 2016 17:48 (seven years ago) link

Lot 49, the early stories and V got me though high school (I'm older than Mark, more vulnerable to the Beat Generation). But, although I need to read it again, and despite some beautiful passage maybe nobody else could have come up with, or done so well---the village of the children, my God! Would have liked to know more about the village of dogs, for that matter---most of GR (finally read a couple years ago) seemed like overextended sessions of punishment for feckless sheeple seeking distraction (punishing himself too? Sure was a lot of work, up to his elbows in all this dreary garble, for several years, apparently). In that sense, as well as some much more beneficial and benign ones, he was as much a 60s-70s Avatar of the Web as Steve Jobs.
Mind you, his intro to the collected apprentice fiction, Slow Learner, can be as self-effacing as the title. Says, in the 90s, that he eventually realized that young TP didn't really understand entrophy etc. And I wouldn't judge him by any one book, esp. one that I prob should read again, yes, though if I do I may be more likely to run out of time for all the later ones (some of them are just as big I think).

dow, Monday, 21 November 2016 20:31 (seven years ago) link

"beautiful passages", Ah meant to say.

dow, Monday, 21 November 2016 20:33 (seven years ago) link

And/or (intending more geezer sympathy, but maybe ending up even more of a Debbie Downer about it after all), we have here maybe the confusion of young TP: on the one hand, he wants the scales to fall from our eyes, man, on the other, he invites us to stare at thee intricately detailed scales for---quite a while. ("Look what he did with the Zodiac in here! Wow and he did the math right!")

dow, Monday, 21 November 2016 21:17 (seven years ago) link

"Pedophile Nazis! Busteddd!

dow, Monday, 21 November 2016 21:18 (seven years ago) link

one month passes...

FYI Alan Jacobs is blogging his reread of the Pynchon oeuvre and it's adding up to some of the best writing about TRP I've read in a long time. Begins here http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2016/12/the-big-pynchon-re-read.html

Stevie T, Thursday, 22 December 2016 22:33 (seven years ago) link

already stopped blogging about it cuz he's gonna write a book :(

baffled by his feelings regarding ATD, sure it has a particularly disorienting & lengthy diversion in the middle, but the ridiculous parts are just what you roll with in a Pynchon book, as he refers to re: Vineland

sleeve, Friday, 30 December 2016 03:20 (seven years ago) link


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