/lit/ - Literature

>>21895736
It's a book about how you need to finish reading it before you should expect to understand it, dumbass.

>>21895736
the CL49 and .V HC reprints are nice

>>21895769
Why are you rude? This is a forum for chatting about books. You need to have some courtesy.

>>21895806
>only reads 60% of an experimental work
>what's the big deal?

>>21895736
Byron the Bulb will explain everything

I’m nearing the end of my second read of it now (GR) and my main takeaway is that it’s a work about dialectics and the subject-other relationship. If you notice, most of the book revolves around a simulated version of an act (death, sex, etc) and then later it’s real counterpart that was brought about by the simulation. For instance, you may not have reached this part quite yet but it’s not a massive spoiler, when slothrop fucks Bianca it’s pre-image is in Alpdrucken (the film) and in fucking Margherita. The rockets fall where he has sexual encounters, and later the sexual encounters themselves are brought into suspicion as many of the purported women simply do not exist. Meaning, Slothrop’s intense sexual fantasies literally call the rocket to fall there. Tchitcherine’s desire to meet Enzian brings them together not out of direct searching, but the secondary effects that his desire has on the Zone. I could go on all day. But, the important part of these examples is that a simulation brings about the real and that these events occur in doubles. I think this could be explained more simply through Lacanian terms where the subject posits an Other who, by the very force of its own internal alienness to humanity, also posits the subject. Meaning, that we create things which then stand for an otherness within ourselves. (Sexual accoutrements, rockets) This otherness within us then fills the thing with a conception of humanity. (the doubling process of sex in the book, rockets falling where Slothrop was) However, it’s not actually a mystical process where material things are capable of thought and influencing reality. The “thinking” done by materiality is merely a projection of our own internal otherness and, as such, the book can be read as a dialectical process where the ego (the characters) struggles with the subconscious (the material structure and content of the book) to achieve a more comprehensive conception of itself as a unity of opposites. This can be seen in the Jamf sections later in the book where Slothrop’s childhood disturbances are even brought into question as to whether or not he just dreamt them up.

>>21895736
is this actually worth reading? I hate the writing style

>>21895736
I'm too much of an Iqlet I got filtered by Vineland

>>21895736
>the main theme of the the two World Wars decimating all cultural norms and ways of living
Only historylets think this. The actual order of this causation is in reverse.

M&D is his best work by far

>>21895736
I just read The Crying of Lot 49, I liked it but I'm still processing the whole work.

>>21896565
That's idealism. Pynchon was a materialist.

>>21895903
Nice takes and I mostly agree. I don't have anything to add. Even Slothrop's paranoia seems fake at times, some kind of self-rationalization of events.

>>21898052
>That's idealism. Pynchon was a materialist.
Empty words with no factual backing.

>>21895736
I’ve taken a break from reading Against the Day. I like it but at the same time don’t care about it like Mason & Dixon or GR, feels a little meandering and unimportant in comparison. Yeah it’s fun but I don’t know if it’s worth the effort to finish it

>>21895736
It’s the literary equivalent of the Simpsons. He just obscures this through Joyce-like retardation. Once you understand that he relies on complex pattern recognition and nothing more, it’s over.

>>21898074
>Once you understand that he relies on complex pattern recognition
Tell me more, I’m intrigued

>>21898074
>complex pattern recognition
Can confirm. I've developed schizophrenia because I read too much into Pynchon.

>>21898052
No, that's not idealism, I mean it literally. The World Wars were a direct result of the preceding nineteenth century, which had "decimated all cultural norms and ways of living," that we have largely forgotten about. It was this state of affairs responsible for the underlying mania of the Western public at the time, and this phenomenon is what the banksters and the rabble-rousers leveraged into massive conflict.

>>21898901
Again, if you do not elaborate what happened in the XIX century to cause whatever happened in the XX, then that's again idealism.
Though I agree that the emergence of world markets and industrialization/spread of capitalism lead to 'all that is holy becoming profane and all that is solid melting' as one German sociologist would say

>>21898976
>Again, if you do not elaborate what happened in the XIX century to cause whatever happened in the XX, then that's again idealism.
That's the part where you do your own research frendo. This is a 4chan post, not an essay. I recommend starting with Ecce Homo where Nietzsche predicts that the twentieth century would be a century of "wars such as have never happened on earth."

Apparently PTA is plotting a Vineland adaptation.

>>21899181
Oh nice, I loved Inherent Vice

>>21899217
Not a popular opinion but I really liked it too. Joaquin Phoenix is a treasure. The book was better as I expected.

Ranking what I've read of Pynchon so far:

Gravity's Rainbow>V.>Mason & Dixon>The Crying of Lot 49>Inherent Vice>Bleeding Edge>Vineland

i like the parts where the rocket goes boom

What are some good essays/books to better appreciate GR? Besides Herman's book on GR

>>21899181
vineland kinda sucked as a book but i would most def purchase that shit on itunes for $5 like i did inherent vice. and you know once the pynchmeister finally croaks his son will let pta do the gravity's rainbow movie for a fatty paycheck.

>>21900278
Just read up on his family history

>>21898088
Humans have exceptional pattern recognition. Like >>21898333
said here, when its a little too good, we go nuts kek. Pynchon uses this ability against us. He uses chains of complex reasoning to tell his stories, as you know, but because part of his interest is in absurdity, irony, and (imo) randomness, when these chains (or patterns) begin to form, some of them end up being meaningless to the reader. Our brains can't handle that. We NEED patterns to mean something. So we try to read farther into Pynchon. That's by design, too, because Pynchon is also interested in paranoia. Reading into things that are not there gives the reader that feeling of paranoia. Pynchon further obscures his patterns through techniques that James Joyce used, stuff like words or phrases with double or triple meanings and complex sentences and stream of consciousness. In normal writers, this I would consider an attempt at "depth." But with Pynchon, its total obfuscation (another of his interests imo). He wants you to wade through his prose to seek patterns that aren't there, because he knows we're human animals who need to see the patterns--which is in part the point to a lot of his work, I believe. He is showing us through prose that we are the proverbial dog that chases the car without thinking about what we'll do when we catch it, and since we ought to know better than the dog, it's absurd that we do it anyway. It reminds me of The Simpsons. Our ritual lives are often absurd and we all know it but we kind of wink and go through with our rituals anyhow; the Simpsons comment on this a lot and I think Pynchon does, too, just in an elevated format. He is actually quite brilliant. But when you realize that's what he's doing, it's over. He can't trick you anymore. You don't believe anything that's going on is serious. UNLESS you hate yourself and insist on chasing down meaning...just the next pattern...that one will explain it all to me.... Just my experience with V. and GR. I haven't read his other books beside Slow Learner.

>>21899181
Apparently (meaning someone said it on /tv/ once) he's been at it since before he made IV. I hope it will be a less faithful adaptation this time.

>>21895736
His patterns may be complex, but the story isn't worth trying to figure out his hidden puzzles. Parts of it are very great and other parts are total shit. The great parts keep you reading, but it just isn't a good story.
>B-BUT HE'S A GENIUS!!!! IT'S JUST LIKE JOYCE!!!
I don't care. I agree with Capote.

>>21895736
> What's the fixation on weird shit?

Pynchon explicitly writes with the intention to confuse for a few reasons in Gravity's Rainbow:

1. Pynchon is deeply into the idea of entropy, or reverse causality. "A screaming comes across the sky," we hear the sound of the V-2 only after it has landed, the Kabbalah, an esoteric Jewish mystical system is constantly deployed throughout the book, yet is explained to the reader at the end of the book. This is just a few of the examples we're dealing with here.

2. Pynchon's enemy is Them. Never explained, barely referenced, the only idea of Them we get is that "They’ embrac[e] possibilities far beyond Nazi Germany." And that's it. Sure, Weizmann is the Bad Guy, but They are invoked as the puppet masters pulling even his strings. Also, in GR, WE are THEM as well, they have an office branch in every corner of our minds, they manipulate our fear, hopes, psychoses to serve Their interests. The only proposed solution to this dilemma is to pursue sadism and masochism in the general public, to defy Them and all they want. It's strange, but it kind of connects to the thesis that these Nazi's were just a bunch of horny bastards. This is why you see characters literally eating shit, it's how they revolt against Them, also Nazism.

3. Pynchon is deeply suspicious of mass-entertainment, and this suspicion extends to the very book he is writing now. It doesn't matter if its Wagnerian opera or a cowboy movie, They manipulate it and use it for their own economic interests. During the scene where the double agent Katje Borgesius watches a film of Grigori the octopus watching a film of her intended to condition him to attack her, we should realize that we are the next link in the chain of conditioning spectatorship as we read the very words on the page. Pynchon wants our paranoia about how They are controlling our minds to extend to him, to his publishers, to all media. This is also why I will never understand why Gravity's Rainbow is so lauded for introducing high and low culture together... Pynchon is deeply suspicious of popular entertainment throughout the book.

>>21899181
I'm genuinely surprised at this, considering how much the film sucks all of the joy and meandering fun out of the book. The film is almost like the cinematic equivalent of showing the audience a mirror and saying, "Take a shower, hippie."

>>21901466
>Weizmann is the Bad Guy
how subtle

>>21901466
This sounds based as fuck. Looks like /lit/ lied to me again. Bumping GR 30 places up my list, probably gonna read it next month.

>>21901466
>"A screaming comes across the sky," we hear the sound of the V-2 only after it has landed
I'm not sure if you're connecting these, but the screaming is an air raid siren

>>21901127
No he's just writing about fractals

>>21901521
It's not trying to be

>>21901466
Also you need to include the racial politics throughout GR. Pynchon sees racism as the rejection of everything the white man sees inferior in himself:

> Shit, now, is the color white folks are afraid of. Shit is the presence of death, not some abstract-arty character with a scythe but the stiff and rotting corpse inside the whiteman’s warm and private own asshole, which is getting pretty intimate. You see many brown toilets? Nope, toilet’s the color of gravestones, classical columns of mausoleums, that white porcelain’s the very emblem of Odorless and Official Death. Shinola shoeshine polish happens to be the color of Shit. Shoeshine boy Malcolm’s in the toilet slappin’ on the Shinola, working off whiteman’s penance on his sin of being born the color of Shit ‘n’ Shinola.

Also, Pynchon sees colonization not as an economic system but a psychic one.

> What’s a colony without its dusky natives? Where’s the fun if they’re all going to die off? Just a big chunk of desert, no more maids, no field-hands, no laborers for the construction or the mining–wait, wait a minute there, yes it’s Karl Marx, that sly old racist skipping away with his teeth together and his eyebrows up trying to make believe it’s nothing but Cheap Labor and Overseas Markets… Oh, no. Colonies are much, much more. Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit.

>>21896443
If you want a quick introduction to his themes, try Crying of Lot 49. GR is a monster that takes a lot of effort to understand and the rewards in my opinion aren't worth it.

>>21901724
No it's worth it

>>21895736

This book reads like 900 pages of 4chan greentexts

>>21901466
This is a good post. However,
>The only proposed solution to this dilemma is to pursue sadism and masochism in the general public, to defy Them and all they want.
This is not a proposed solution. The scatological fixation only appears with characters very firmly within Their grasp, most prominently General Pudding and Slothrop when they're both being thoroughly conditioned by The White Visitation.
The real proposed solution is preterition. That's why Slothrop's family history is explained in such detail, why Enzian's group of survivors use their word describing themselves as "the ones passed over," why The Counterweight and any other form of resistance is so heavily implied to be doomed, and why Slothrop's escape is to dissolve out of the narrative and disappear into the preterite as the book concludes without him.
I suspect Byron the Bulb factors into this too, but I just started my first full reread and that section honestly threw me pretty hard the first time through.

>>21902754
This is better than OP's take, yes. It's important to note that Pynchon doesn't really see this Counterforce ever 'defeating' Them, though, since they control literally everything. Remember, "AN ARMY OF LOVERS CAN BE DEFEATED." Pynchon uses Byron the Bulb as a symbol of Byronic romance against the industrialized system: Byron, like the light bulb always glowing, has the knowledge, but tragically none of the power. This is the fate of the modern artist (Pynchon and his ilk).

>>21902754
>>21902812
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Pynchon sees the counterforce as completely incapable of destroying Them. Rather, Pynchon understands that Their main form of control is a modernist form of rationality which precludes certain analytical and mystical viewpoints. Thus, for Pynchon, in true dialectical fashion, the way that we overcome Them is through creating a culture which emphasizes the importance of stressing areas of contradiction within the atomized bourgeois worldview. One of the largest examples of this I can think of would be his portrayal of the other side of death in the novel. Early in the book at the Nazi Seance we get the clearest picture from Rathenau of the other side. He professes it’s near indescribability for spatio-temporal beings but explains that it’s sort of a carrying-on of the individual consciousness through a realm of ontological immediacy. Importantly, he hints that there is a sort of plan guiding the workings of our world and that the dead can understand and influence it with experience at its analysis. What all this means is that on the other side of death there is a group of spectral beings with otherworldly knowledge and power influencing, in part, our world. The Nazi’s take his grim knowledge and giggle, making light of it, suggesting that They underestimate the dead’s importance. Throughout the novel after that we get a few more glimpses over the other side which all seem to continue reinforcing this idea that the dead are confederated and working towards the unfolding of a plan. Additionally, They are not invincible which can be seen through the plot several times. Slothrop loses his handlers in Zürich and doesn’t really regain his observational retinue until Cuxhaven where he promptly outsmarts them at a whorehouse and has Major Marvy take the castration intended for him. Additionally, there’s the issue of how much of our paranoia is gratuitous to Them. Tchitcherine’s paranoia towards his government, heightened at the news of a Soviet spy from Moscow asking about him, is actually just Slothrop who Major Marvy mistakes for a Soviet. Several pivotal points of Slothropian paranoia are brought into question at the end about their reality. Weissman’s passion for life, sublimated in his fervor for the rocket so that he might better serve Them, is ultimately the plan’s undoing despite all attempts to subdue it. All signs point to a tough fight, for sure, but not a theoretically unwinnable one.

bump

>>21895736
Should I re-read V. or read Mason & Dixon. Was going to read the latter but I'm also interested on re-visiting V. or even going for my third read of Gravity's Rainbow. I think GR is my favorite novel and I don't even think I understand 20% of it, so seeing some insight on this thread was pretty great.

>>21905836
In my humble opinion, M&D is the second best book Pynchon ever wrote behind GR. Not only is it a classic with elements of his paranoia and his sense of humor and wacky events. But, if you liked the portions of GR talking about Slothrop’s ancestors then you’ll love M&D. It’s an exploration of what it means to be an American, a story of two opposite men forming a lifelong friendship, and Pynchon’s best prose by far in any of his works.

>>21905878
Will keep it in consideration, thanks. Since I started reading his works last year I got inspired into writing stories, though I'd like to go for something like a graphic novel considering my passion for drawing. But feel like I'm still not mature enough to actually "get" Gravity's Rainbow, let alone attempt something as insane and convoluted as Pynchon's works.

>>21902754
There's a throwaway sentence somewhere in the novel that was incredibly telling, something along the lines of "sometimes something happens to a person and they spend the rest of their life walking around as a giant two year old". Consider what may or may not have happened to Slothrop with his sexual hangups, and then think about everybody else in Their grasp.

>>21902051
that's why he's the best!

>>21907232
Pynchon stop posting on 4chan and publish another book already it's been 10 years goddamn

Question: was Pig Bodine a real person? He appears in Gravity's Rainbow, in V. and even in Slow Learner. Surely he's the key to all of this.

>>21906060
If you're trying to intimate that the BDSM side of things is a mark of Their influence rather than the proposed solution the other anon proposed, then yes, I agree.
There are clear tonal differences between people fucking for fun and (for lack of a better phrase) fucking for evil in all of Pynchon's work, even going back to large chunks of V., like the horrifying fetishistic medley happening in that flashback to the fortified manor in the Südwest with a young Blicero. You can see it in the nasty way Lake Traverse gets used by her father's killers in Against the Day, the objectification and cartoonish bimbofication of every woman Wolfman uses in Inherent Vice when Doc finds his tie collection, the spooky Jesuit sex slavery in Mason & Dixon, countless GR episodes from the Anubis to the porno snuff film. I'm rereading The White Visitation's initial chapters right now and the whole thing reads like pic related, the whole section is couched in language like this.
I think it contrasts very sharply with the usual playful, maybe scampish sexuality of his protagonists, who just kinda stumble into sex with hot girls all the time in a way that he tries to make wholesome and endearing, and when it suddenly isn't (Doc when Shasta returns, Slothrop and Bianca, Yashmeen Halfcourt's unhappy threesome) it's so jarring that you immediately pick up that there must be some kind of evil influence here.

bros i didn't even realise the first 2 pages of GR was a dream... am i too dumb to read this book

>>21909179
You don't need to get it to enjoy it.

>>21908140
the entire last ~200 pages of ATD with the threesome was so repulsive that it soured me on the entire novel

>>21902051
Isn't that Crime and Punishment?

>>21909975
Dostoyevsky is Reddit.

>>21910040
Pynchud is even more reddit

>>21909975
You're thinking of Notes from the Underground, which is sadly not that long.

admit it, you guys only suck the novel off for its fantastic writing and proses

>>21911274
you forgot to bump

>>21911274
I suck off everything Pynchon does because he's one of only a handful of writers who can make me smile on every page.

Is Pinecones prose really as extraordinary as they say?

I personally enjoy the style but I admit I get a little peeved when I see him compared with the greats. I think he's extremely talented but people seem to overstate his competence when it comes his prose. I'd even contest his grouping with Stevenson, Chesterton, Wodehouse, Joyce, Perelman, Benchley with Shakespeare, Joyce, Browne, Johnson and Taylor being the apex.
I feel the same way about Nabokov, incredible talent but not nearly as exceptional as his literary heritage.

Am I looking at this the wrong way?

>>21912116
shut up nerd

>>21912116
His prose was never extraordinary. I have never seen him mentioned even among the more recent great stylists like McCarthy, Updike, Gass, Nabokov etc. It's good and works well in his books.

>>21912116
it is

>>21912224
>worse than McCarthy

lol no

>>21912264
Easily. I was talking about popular consciousness anyway.

>>21912283
you don't know what you're talking about lol

>>21912323
You are just seething at a common opinion, anon. More common than Gass btw, who never really got his due as a stylist.

>>21912325
whatever helps you cope

>>21912325
>>21912338
Why can't you just have civilized conversations with actual content? Give peace a chance, man.

>>21912352
he started it

>>21912338
You're the one unable to cope with facts.
>>21912352
No one's fighting.

>>21912355
I answered a question, and not to you anyway.

>>21912364
yeah and you got mad when someone disagreed with your terrible opinion

>>21912376
It wasn't an opinion. And you are the one who got mad. I am pretty docile.>>21912283

>>21912394
it was though, sorry

>>21912352
Shut the fuck up, Sportello.

>>21912401
Forgiven. Hopefully, your knowledge about these things get better. Why do you think his prose is better than Cormac's though? That's something not even Pynchon's ardent fans contest.

>>21912429
how do you know about proses when you can't even read?

>>21912437
>proses

>>21912116
Reread the Disgusting English Candy Drill and then tell me he isn't an amazing prose stylist.
He probably doesn't reach the absolute apex of your list, but for post-war Americans there aren't many who can compete with him. I think he's a lot more concerned with being playful with language than strictly beautiful, if that makes sense, but he has complete control over every fucking sound and syllable he uses.

>>21912443
I think he's taking the piss. When Waldun had a dozen threads a day about a year ago, some pajeet comment praising him became popular that went something like "The proses... They flow..."

>>21912458
Hello sir this is Steve from Microsoft the prose, they flow

>>21912437
What are you talking about?

>>21912446
>playful
How? He doesn't pun that often.

>>21912486
uh anon uh have you ever read him

>>21912489
Yeah. Having zany scenes is not my definition of playing with language.

>>21912497
OK good thing he's more than just zany scenes i guess

>>21912497
I genuinely do not believe you can say this with a straight face if you A) aren't an ESL unable to parse wordplay and B) read any one of his works to completion.
It's hard to find a single paragraph where he isn't making some kind of pun. How many limericks about having sex with rockets did he manage to write into GR, at least a dozen?

>>21912500
Any examples? I know the fur henchmen style shit he pulls but that's not nearly as much. I'd say he tries to be beautiful more often than not, rather than playful. I don't remember anything in GR that was like Sirens or Oxen.

>>21912512
A dozen limericks would still be less for a 760 page novel.

>>21912525
Yes, every word outside of those was deadly serious.
Are you one of those people who reads the wikipedia article about the book then starts smugly shitposting about how it must be awful?

>>21912533
Why are you mad? How does this (>>21912525) give you the impression that I am hating? What makes you insecure about this whole thing? If it makes you feel better than Mabokov's playfulness with language is similarly overstated. The most you get are multilingual puns here and there. Pynchon is the same sort.

>>21912549
I meant this one >>21912517

>>21912549
because you don't actually say anything just namedrop and act smug while moving the goalposts

>>21912561
I don't know what made you insecure but hope you have a better day. I have been pretty clear as to what I was saying.

>>21912571
you've given me alot to think about..

>>21912587
Hopefully it was the 1st sentence that did the job and not 2nd.

>>21912446
> he has complete control over every fucking sound and syllable he uses
How so?

>>21912446
Yeah I love that about his style, I just had a feeling I was filtered and was looking for clarification about what other anons saw in his style
Also that anon isn't me, I just got off work and I haven't been able to post anything other than >>21912116

>>21912264
>>21912323
>>21912338
>>21912376
>>21912401
>>21912437
>>21912446
>>21912512
>>21912533
>>21912561
>>21912587
Kek, pynchudcucks are such insecure fags. He is trash. Find another writer to base your personality on, cuck.

>>21895903
I love how you did a good job explaining the book, nobody knew enough about it to acknowledge you, and then the thread kept spewing misconceptions and nonsense for like 150 more posts

>>21901174
vineland is his favorite Pynchon, he said it in that Marc maron interview from 2014 where he also basically admitted Pynchon has a cameo in his movie adaptation of Inherent vice

>>21914221
C’est la vie. Effortposting on /lit/ is essentially a lost cause anyway, but it always makes me satisfied to see when others do it here as well. There’s a couple real Shakespeare heads on /lit/ and a few philosophy guys that I’ve noticed who’s posts are recognizable enough for me to take solace in the continuity of their effortposts.

>>21895769
flippy bippy heh heh

>>21915491
You forgot to bump.

Am I the only one that thinks Ruggles would make for a good dog name?

>>21895903
Goodpost

>>21895736
Reminder to boycott the gypsy carpetbagger and all his PR shills who are employed to manufacture his reputation. Chris via "asshole" is a plant. He has taken money from deep vellum to shill cartarshitcu on his channel to his gullible audience of 21 years olds. They even got his review published in a semi-decent magazine, something he was unable to do himself for 10 years. The fraud is so obvious and bad taste.

>>21916509
Pynchon isn't a gypsy. He's a WASP.

>>21916525
Learn to read, faggot

>>21916533
Ma'am this is Pynchon thread

>>21916533
Learn to not be retarded, retard.

>>21916525
He’s not a WASP, dipshit. He’s Catholic.

bump

>>21903528
I'm also tempted to use the Rathenau seance as the skeleton key to the book but the forces on the other side of the death are more flavorful than integral to the plot. He talks of coal becoming fuel, the living turned into the dead turned into energy for machines, and he talks about
>"the persistence, then, of structures favoring death. Death converted into more death. Perfecting its reign, just as the buried coal grows denser, and overlaid with more strata—epoch on top of epoch, city on top of ruined city. This is the sign of Death the impersonator"
which comes off more like a marxist rant than a warning of invaders beyond the zero. There may be secular and mystical Thems but underpinning it all is a system to whom humans are but a means to feed itself. In part 4 Blicero tells of people on the moon that seems reminiscent of the role of the ghosts.
>"There are ways for getting back, but so complicated, so at the mercy of language, that presence back on Earth is only temporary, and never ‘real’... passages out there are dangerous, chances of falling so shining and deep.... Gravity rules all the way out to the cold sphere, there is always the danger of falling."
The people who seem to have some spiritual ascendence, Rathenau and Bland and later Blicero and Thanatz(?) are all architects of the system, they seem to have increased their temporal bandwidth like Slothrop but rather than escaping they have got stuck into the greater system.

Don't really have anything to add in terms of interpretation, but I always liked that little moment in Vineland when Zoyd meets Mucho and it mentions his genial divorce. As if Pynchon's letting us know Oedipa learned what she wanted in that auction room, made it out, and went on with her life.

>>21918930
And yet we never do...

>>21918930
>"Well I still wish it was back then, when you were the Count. Remember how the acid was? Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? God, I knew then, I knew. . . ."
>They had a look. "Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to die. Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it'll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take it away from us."
>"Yeah, but they can't take what happened, what we found out."
>"Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming — just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that we really are going to die. And they've got us again." It was the way people used to talk.

>>21918906
There's another interesting quote about Blicero's ascendance
>"Whatever happened at the end, he has transcended. Even if he’s only dead. He’s gone beyond his pain, his sin—driven deep into Their province, into control, synthesis and control, further than—” well, he was about to say “we” but “I” seems better after all, “I haven’t transcended. I’ve only been elevated. That must be as empty as things get: it’s worse than being told you won’t have to die by someone you can’t believe in....'
Enzian sees this as a positive but I think he is mistaken. This poster gets it >>21902754. Blicero's sacrifice was an impotent faux-pagan ritual. Only Slothrop escaped. Enzian also misinterpreted Katjes fate.
>“You, poor Katje. Your story is the saddest of all.” She looks up to see exactly how his face will be mocking her. She is stunned to see tears instead running, running over his cheeks. “You’ve only been set free""

Also, the control and synthesis mention was interesting. The Rathenau line about the nature of control and synthesis seems like a direct appeal from the author. I think control alludes to the total, gravitational control of Them over both life and death, but when he speaks of its true nature, that is control theory. The longest technical section in the novel is a description of the control module of the rocket and this book came out during the heyday of cybernetics. That a system can control a vehicle or robot through deterministic equations alone, or return any outgoing vector to a stable point has direct parallels to the system of production that is Them. The true nature of synthesis is less clear, earlier in the Séance they mention beige, that new colors are being synthesized, and later talk of new plastics and drugs and other chemicals. But the actual threat, at least to Blicero, is analysis:
>"Europe’s Original Sin—the latest name for that is Modern Analysis"
It could be that the nature of synthesis is that it is actually analysis, at least the synthesis that is going on in the 20th century. Recall the Kenosha kid: each sentence has new meaning but they are all the same words. Same with technology, and organic chemistry. How can you hope to beat the system using its own material? The pagans and the non-secularists are going back to pre-secular forms of protest, too impotent since at least Mason & Dixon to accomplish anything, but they are portrayed in a positive light for this reason.

>>21912283
What popular consciousness is talking about Gass and Updike at all, much less as prose stylists better than Pynchon?

>>21919177
Don't know about Gass, but Updike gets repeated mentions among great American stylists more often than Pynchon. That's literally his only appeal.

I read 20 pages of Mason and Dixon and it felt comfy but I read The Crying of Lot 49 and it felt disgusting

>>21919244
>one book set in an era of discovery and progress
>another book set in one of the most degenerate cities in America

>>21919244
Slavery and colonialism is pretty degenerate

>>21896443
No
It's one of the worst books I've ever read. Just go downtown, buy a scizo homeless person lunch, maybe give him a little meth, and strike up a conversation about war, s&m, scatophilia beastiality,pedophilia, incest, nazis,lightbulbs, bananas, germany, rocket science, bear suits, mothers ect. Tie it all together. You'll get the same results. There is no plot that i could make out. Cleverness here and there, hidden in writing, some big analogous material that is obscure and without context. It's not profound. You would need to be on a lot of drugs and have someone walk you through it to find any big meaning in it. It is anything but obvious.

>>21919679
lmao stick to Dostoyevsky, kid
leave big books for the big boys

>>21919714
Gladly
If orally raping your daughter for hours and molesting the neighbor girl behind the shed is highbrow literature, you can have it.

>>21919714
What the hell is this? You can't knock down Dosto at the expense of Pynchon of all people. They are more together than separate, even as artists.

>>21895736
NAZIS. Don’t censor yourself you tiktok zoomer faggot.

>>21919679
Funny how every single time somebody talks out their ass like this about the book they can't help but expose themselves as only reading the first five pages by bringing up the fucking bananas.
>I didn't get it, which means there can't possibly be anything to get and everyone who says there is is just pretending
This is the most worthless narcissistic criticism that can possibly be thrown out about any work. Even if you just look at the last dozen Pynchon threads on here and skim the effortposts that come out of them it's easy to see that you're wrong, and that's just from the retards on 4chan.

>>21920980
I just finished the book like a month ago.
I was totally niave about it. I didn't know anything about it when i started it and didn't look into it after i was finished. I had a really bad taste in my mouth a third of the way in. I just wanted to get it over with after he orally rapes his daughter for hours. The daughter he had with the s&m actress who made him eat turds that he dreamed were nigger dicks. Who was different every year or something and made no sense at all. What was that all about?

After lurking both places for awhile, I’ve noticed /lit/ seems to hold Gravity’s Rainbow in the highest regard, while r/thomaspynchon seems to prefer Against the Day. I’ve only read The Crying of Lot 49 so I’m wondering if there is anything inherent in those books that would explain the reason for that?

>>21922441
Reddittards only like Against the Day because it’s his le-alternate-history-ebin-steampunk novel. Unironically. Gravity’s Rainbow is his most developed work with the best execution.

>>21922441
>>21922514
Both audiences are redditors. Ignore

>>21922441
The engagement with the ATD readthrough on reddit was far lower than the GR readthrough. It is just a result of being in a specialized forum that people will develop idiosyncratic favorites. Some Pink Floyd uberfans think Ummagumma is their best album.

>>21921931
Speedreader's only takeaway is the things you could find on the wikipedia page, and they don't even get that right! What is the point of reading a book if you don't retain anything from it?

>>21922441
>Missiles , Decentralized Networks , Psy.War ; or how I came to Love the TechnoFascist State.

I'm currently reading Mason & Dixon (my first ever Pynchon), I've seen several posts on /lit/ praising this book and thought I'll give it a shot. I'm 130 pages through and I feel like I got filtered so many times but still got most of the plot.

Pynchonbros, I want to know your approach to Pynchon, do you read his books without relying on Wiki notes, or do you just dive in? Sorry if my question seems silly, I just want to get the most out of the book and enjoy it.

>>21922951
I don't try to "get" anything, I just read them because they're funny.

>>21922951
His writing style really requires you to have some familiarity with his work in order to comprehend it fully. There were sections in GR when I first read it, it being my first Pynchon, that I didn’t realize were dream segments or drug-induced manias. His use of point of view in his work is very unique, that paired with a tendency to go on autistic rambles makes sections of his work a slow read for the unacquainted. I would recommend reading TCOL49 before Mason and Dixon although M&D is one of my favorites by him. Really, much of the richness of the novel is inaccessible without some degree of historical knowledge of the milieu: philosophical, paranoidal, popular culture, etc; and, an understanding of how he tells his stories.

>>21922951
Slow down. Reread a sentence if you had trouble parsing it. It is always worthwhile to figure out what he is talking about, don't be ashamed to google shit. Some of it is pretty obscure.

>>21895736

NGE - the book

>>21923027
Yeah you can't really read anything he wrote after GR without reading GR first and you should read Tcol49 before that basically V. is optional

>>21895736
Does it make sense that CoL49, and a lot of Pynchon's works in general, remind me of early GTA games?

>>21924468
In what way? And how early are we talking here, top-down era?

>>21924468
Listening to Chatterbox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lPytfSy-04

>>21924473
Similar feeling of paranoia and anxiety at a surface level, of the whole world "being organised around you." Being caught in an entangled web of deception and corruption. Hidden abstract patterns. Corporate satire. Macabre creativity. CoL49 is, of course, more meaningful in every sense.

>>21922441
GR has had fifty years of cult following in exactly the kind of outcast demographics that make up 4chan, not to mention the simultaneous critical acclaim. Plus, AtD was his third/fourth (depends if you count V.) -big- book, that's gonna sap some excitement that might otherwise inspire people to read a new experimental novel, and it's like 40% longer. It's a stylistically easier, but also less thrilling, tome than GR, but it's not all that much less bleak, and the lesser amount of absurdity and psychedelia, not to mention how the WWII setting allows conservatives to pretend Pynchon doesn't hate their views, so when a non-fan, even a highly literate one, comes to AtD, they usually get 500 pages in, don't have familiarity with Pynchon's long-term thematic explorations and intertextual dialect, lose steam, and shelve it for a period TBD.
On the other hand, if you read GR, even if you hated it, you get to feel the rush of "I proved my worth, I read the Big Important Postmodern Work, AND IT SUCKED", which is a whole lot more enticing than "I read the least popular book from a guy who has other works held in nigh-universally higher esteem, and I hated it!"
Then, in fora dedicated to the obsessive fans of Tommy's, the latter dynamics get switched. Everyone's basically said and heard it all before about Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day, for all its flaws, is just Pynchon going full-throttle for 1200 pages, getting deep into a less-popularly-discussed area of historical analysis than WWII, writing at least one or two decent women for once, giving the reader his zany math-flavored surreality alongside a helping of actual human condition that isn't concealed in a constellation of information for once, without sacrificing the abstraction or obscurantism that his fans love.
If you're into music, it's like the Smile fans of the Beach Boys or the Animals fans of Pink Floyd.

>>21924468
>this damn government is a leviathan

>>21922951

just read the detailed summary of every episode on wiki, then throw away the book

>>21924475
this brings me back

>>21918906
This reminds me of the duck in M&D, down to Mondaugen's Law

>>21922728
It's the Division Bell

>>21923439
Don't compare this book to NGE, anime is trash
Also, NGE would be Gravity's Rainbow - the book, since GR came before

>>21928070
>he doesn't know

>>21928079
>he doesn't know
>muh esoteric meme
Go fuck yourself

>>21923439
nge is a simple story

>>21895736

Where in the book did Katjie get raped?

>>21928462
Isn't that her entire arc

>>21928462
When she was undercover. Except it wasn't in a castle, it was in a shack on Luneberg Heath.

>>21920980
>by bringing up the fucking bananas.
Hahaha I feel called out. This was me after trying to read GR two times, both times getting filtered and dropping the book, shitposting on /lit/ how the book sucks, in a detached, ironic way. I would attach a pic of Pynchon and write something like
>zoinkers bananas i'm so randumb xDDDDD
and watch the replies flow in. It was a simpler time 5 years ago.

But I'm glad I'm nearing the end of the book this time. It's so good. It's the reason I started this thread lol

>>21928868
Well at least you've become a slightly less awful person over the last five years. Probably not though.

>>21929316
I'd like to believe so, but that's for other people up to decide.

>>21895736
>Crying Lot & GR
Then wash your hands of it.

>>21919240
>Updike
Updike rehashed BABBIT repeatedly and is a former incarnation of Franzen. A non-entity for ngmis

>Gass
Amusing, playful, little else. "Poetry is impossible after Auschwitz." (for a German), but comedy is on the table until the end of days.

>>21922514
ATD is the SubPrime of novels and anyone stanning the garbage printed after it is immediately suspect.

>>21922951
It's the Redditor's Sotweed factor and a completely puerile shitshow in inconsistently period period prose.

>>21924700
>or the Animals fans of Pink Floyd.
Smile was apt but this is calumny

>>21929625
ur a faget

>>21929625
Redpill me on the Sotweed Factory

>>21930296
>"In fact, just recently Pynchon was kind enough to send me an inscribed copy. He wrote: 'To John Barth: Been there, done that.'"

https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/spring/john-barth/

>>21930327
What did he mean by this?