/lit/ - Literature

>>20426469
There's no point to any of this shit. Pynchon has nothing of value to say, he just likes writing prose and capturing descriptive images. Events occur only to set the characters up to display those images. There is no care put into a continuous and developing expression of human experience. Everything is segmented and isolated.

>>20426491
I wholly disagree to be honest. His imagery didn't really strike me as anything special compared to that of a Woolf or Gogol, who I think excel at painting pictures with words. And on the other hand, I felt that the progression of Oedipa's mania/investigation felt very natural and that all events tied together quite well.

>>20426469
For me, the central theme is that meaning is hidden in plain sight everywhere, but attunement to the true hidden patterns of the world is often indistinguishable from mental illness. The plot is driven by ambiguities of meaning surrounding the possible Trystero conspiracy, and in making choices about what to believe and whom to trust, Oedipa manages to find a kind of order in the chaos of her life, but it's an open question whether this order is real or just paranoia. I think it's significant that the conspiracy at the heart of the novel is an alternative postal service because it highlights the importance of communication in history and the way that developments in society are driven by the spread of information. This collective information-processing is what allows us to integrate our experiences into coherent worldviews, but the sense-making systems in which we participate also influence us and constrain the way we see the world. We can make various efforts to escape our socially-conditioned habits of perception and meaning-making, but people whose thinking deviates too much from the majority are likely to fall into madness by investing patterns in their life with meanings that don't correspond to reality. Oedipa finds a new way to make sense of things she might otherwise ignore by participating in the alternative information-processing network she finds as she investigates the post-horn symbol, the revenge tragedy, the Nefastis machine, and the anomalous postage stamp, and her experiences throughout the novel change the way she sorts relevant from irrelevant information, resulting in either psychosis or a revelation of hidden meanings in her life. Trystero is real enough for Oedipa to await the crying of lot 49 and it's up to the reader to decide whether to agree with the meaning that she has found in the novel's events or dismiss her as finding meaning that isn't really there.

>>20426968
Took me a while but I found the horn

>>20426673
I think I had an alright grasp on every part of this novel except the Nefastis Machine segment. Was the point of that that for some people, it's impossible to sort through all the information they are exposed to? I found that it felt a little vague.

>>20427296
>She didn’t find the elephant.

>>20430066
That looks more like a donkey to me, maybe it's just too low rez

Also what was under the silver lake?

>>20431056
Bones

>>20426491
If you want that read Vineland

>>20431056
a shitty movie that couldn't decide if it was supposed to be a comedy or a thriller

>>20426469
the theme is that everything in the universe has meaning or absolutely nothing does; i can expand if you want

>>20431463
absolutely filtered

>>20426491
Don't forget degenerate fetish shit.

>>20432704
I can't believe Pynchon's final novel has a footjob scene and mentions Dragonball Z.

>>20426469
GR, but same power v. paranoia dynamic. CoL49 doesn't celebrate the apolitical as much. https://americanaejournal.hu/vol6no2/lacey

>>20426469
I dont think that Pynchon was trying to hide what Tristero was "For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America...". The book is about the soul of the United States and in many ways is a love letter to it. It is trying to answer "What does it mean to be American?". And living in that confused state of not knowing the answer, of living in the excluded middle is the answer that people seek. That is what it means to be American, what the U.S. as a country brings uniquely to philosophy of the world. An allowance of confusion, misdirection, conspiracy, irony, satire, insincerity, and degeneracy. The largess of meaning

>>20426598
Best into Woolf books?

>>20433363
Most people say Mrs Dalloway but I read To The Lighthouse first and think that's a better starting point. I'll be reading The Waves and A Room Of Your Own when I can get my hands on them

>>20433443
Sweet, I have lighthouse on my bookshelf.

Thanks anon

Pychon is a psuedo-intellectual. He dropped out of the Cornell University College of Engineering and transferred to the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences where he eventually got a B.A. in English.

Pynchon's lack of scientific and technical understanding is quite apparent. His descriptions of Maxwell's Demon and the implications thereof are laughable. He reminds of a high school aged Redditor talking about quantum physics.

>>20426469
My reading is that the whole Trystero mystery was a setup. Oedipa is a test subject in a program to replicate MKUltra through paranoia rather than drugs. Her husband is a literal MKUltra test subject being fed the drugs through a psychologist intermediary, and Oedipa is just a test subject for the next phase.

>>20435333
It's not a textbook, bugman.

>>20432667
expand plz

>>20431463
filtered

>>20435333
filtered

>>20432704
This isn't actually Pynchon right?

>>20432667
eggs panned

>tfw newfags don't know the lore