/lit/ - Literature

It's one of his best, actually. Not quite as revolutionary as his '70s work but just as grand in scope, plus the prose is lovely and it's nice to see Pynchon letting his guard down and being sentimental for a change.

>>4122509
This. It deserves more acclaim than it's got compared to his other works.

Harold Bloom says its his masterpiece, for what that's worth.

I'm inclined to agree.

I adored it. Read it this summer and it was the best book I'd read in a while.

I'd never read Pynchon before, so I didn't know what to expect and the combination of great writing, philosophizing, and goofiness really was a pleasure. I felt like I was discovering something new. I'm reading "Against the Day" now, and it's good, but I don't think anything will match how I felt about M&D.

>>4122572
It is. It really is!

Thanks lit, I'll pick it up next time I'm at the bookstore.

It's my favorite work of Pynchon's, and I've read Gravity's Rainbow and V..

>>4122503
Ive read all of his books and even mostly through Bleeding Edge and M&D is by far his greatest achievement. Kind of rough to get into at first, he uses the grammar and language of the late 1700's, but its so so so worth it.

1. Gravity's Rainbow (indisputable)
2. Mason & Dixon
3. V.

>>4122703
I'd put V. up top. Of the trinity it's the one without a long section 2/3 of the way through where Pynchon more or less goes - 'and then, in that zone, there was a shit load of stuff that could happen, like this, and this, and this, and this'. I mean, V. isn't exactly classical novel structure, but it doesn't just break down and jam for two hundred pages.

End of M&D is all-time though.

>>4122503

Dat book title.

Mason THE LINEEEEEEEE DixOONNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoyable and massively impressive. You will at the very least come away thinking fucking WOW!

>>4122503
It's mentioned all the time in Pynchon rated threads

I rank it up with the best of Melville, Emerson and Thoreau. Faulkner too.

It's jaw-dropping. You'll find small, special pleasures on every page. The final act especially so.

>>4123289
Maybe I'm just blind then

I've only just started it, but I already love it. Wonderfully written.

How's Against the Day? I like the period, and I like when Pynchon goes full maximalism, but it seems it's the red-headed stepchild of his books, along with Vineland.

>>4124364
it's great too, though I haven't finished it yet

I'm about to start The Crying Lot of 49. Where would you guys rank that one?

>>4124398
I read it post-Gravity's Rainbow and was a bit underwhelmed by it. It's so much shorter tha, GV that the same narrative chaos, the paranoia, the conspiracies, the psycho-sexual deviation don't seem to have quite the same time to brew and simmer.

It would probably feel different had I read them in the opposite order, and I know some people believe Lot 49 benefits from its brevity.

>>4124428
Yeah Lot 49 is a great introduction to Pynchon.

>>4124398
I'm reading it now.
Just finished my 4th chapter as my introduction to Pynchon. He mocks the 60s' trends (including the media's promotion of music) and Freud fan-boys more than once. I still don't know what to think of the muted symbol and Oedipa's encounter with the old guy. What does it symbolize?

>>4124433
It's a whole novel about mysteries which do not have answers. Their inability to symbolize anything specific is the point.