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/lit/ - Literature

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13630262 No.13630262 [Reply] [Original]

There are two Pynchons. One is the genius who wrote V (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1965), Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and Mason & Dixon (1997). The Other is probably an amanuensis, perhaps a young relative, someone to whom the Master has lent his name. This Other wrote Vineland (1986), Inherent Vice (2009), Bleeding Edge (2013) and possibly also Against the Day (2006).

I base this hypothesis on two things. 1) Prose. Whoever wrote Gravity's Rainbow has a command of language that surpasses Vineland by many orders of magnitude. Not a single sentence in Vineland sounds like it was written by Pynchon. The only common denominator is the goofiness, which is easy to emulate. 2) Cognitive strength. The work of the Other is intellectually trivial compared to the work of the One. So maybe Pynchon suffered a stroke during the thirteen years between Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland? This doesn't explain Mason & Dixon, his greatest work to date. Why is he doing this? A PoMo joke? Money?

>> No.13630288

>>13630262

Apparently Pynchon was working on Mason & Dixon for a while before it got published, working on it during his genious phase.

>> No.13630292

>>13630262
Why is AtD in the latter category?

>> No.13630328

>>13630262
The who wrote the Slow Learner?

>> No.13630717

>>13630262
why would the real Pynchon publish a novel after already lending his name to another author

>> No.13630737

decent possibility he writes with collaborators

>> No.13630807

>possibly also Against the Day
fuck off
otherwise good post

>> No.13630918

I heard he's writing a book with Norm MacDonald at the moment

>> No.13630924

>>13630262
why only 2 Pynchons?
why not 3 or 4 or 5 or maybe a dozen? or a maybe fucking million? who knows?

i hope you fucking die soon

>> No.13630955

I get the sentiment. V, Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and Mason & Dixon operate on a level Vineland, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge don't even approach.

I enjoy his later novels, but there is a certain mystification that's gone. They feel flat, two dimensional, cheaply moralistic, narratively scattershot but generally speaking understandable. I don't like understanding what Pynchon has to say. Brock Vond, Mickey Wolfmann, whatshisname Windust... fat cats... neocons... bad... What happened to the moral clusterfuck of Enzien, Tchitcherine, Blicero, and Gottfried?

Maybe he got off the drugs and straightened his thinking out some. Maybe he thought he was taking his head out of his ass and letting go of a certain intentioned mystification. Vineland feels like an open and honest book, if not a great one. But I don't want an honest book from the poet laureate of paranoia, I want 760 pages of high powered esotericism.

>> No.13630975

Inherent Vice is his best work tho

>> No.13631089

>>13630975
It's a shit book and the reason why I haven't bothered with rest of Pynchon.

>> No.13631096

>>13631089
weird, it was the same case but with Gravity's Rainbow for me

>> No.13631100
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13631100

>>13631096
Only good /lit/ memebook I've read was "Blood Meridian".

>> No.13631104

>>13631100
yeah, I agree, BM was challenging but also pretty rewarding at least

>> No.13631122

>>13631089
I urge you to give him a second chance. Just pick something better.

>> No.13631125

>>13631100
moar

>> No.13631128
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13631128

>>13631122
I might read Mason Dixon since I have been reading American histories from pioneers to WW 1

>> No.13631157

>>13631128
you might not like it, it has a weird 18th century prose

>> No.13631163

>>13630918
Is it about a national tragedy?

>> No.13631165
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13631165

>>13631157
I don't mind that in itself. I've read diaries from the 18th century and I was fine reading Shakespeare (but yes I had to google bits and pieces from time to time).

>> No.13631276

>>13631100
kristiiniicole

>> No.13631754
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13631754

The trajectory of his career follows the trajectory of his life. He went from a young, brilliant, cynical but earnest hippie who loved drugs and saw some real potential to change the world to a jaded ex-hippie who is more down to Earth. His newer work is more sentimental, it isn't as dark and malevolent and cripplingly paranoiac. The goofiness is still there, same with the dives into the surreal, but it's more lucid in its portrayal of characters. I reckon Mason & Dixon changed dramatically over the course of its writing to the warm, familial piece we have now, so it's more transitional than Vineland even.
Pinecone alleviated his paranoia with a retreat to his family, which shines through in Bleeding Edge; Inherent Vice is his reflection back on his time as a hippie, and how unstable of a movement it really was. He's still socially conscious, he's still at the core an anti-authority boomer, but he's mellowed out and I'm sure is a much happier person for it.

>> No.13631762

>The Crying of Lot 49
Clearly a potboiler, dazzlingly unambitious compared to his other work; at its best it's great, and its worst it's a slump. Inferior to both Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge despite being less 'Pynchonesque' (Bleeding Edge being Late Pynch's mirror)

>> No.13631767

It’s the same person. The first books you mentioned were all written by Pynchon while he was black out drunk. He got sober in the 90s

>> No.13631768

>>13630262
The dialogue in Vineland is incredible. He obviously wrote it so his dad would stop looking at him funny.

>> No.13631837

>>13630924

Hi Tom

>> No.13632064

>>13631768
explain

>> No.13632100

>muh pynchon is genius

Why do the fans never talk about why that is so? All I hear is pseud talk about how he is a >too smart author.

>> No.13632129

>>13630955
>Maybe he got off the drugs and straightened his thinking out some. Maybe he thought he was taking his head out of his ass and letting go of a certain intentioned mystification.
Maybe he went outside and started spending time with people.

>> No.13632159

>>13631754
>he's still at the core an anti-authority boomer
he's silent generation

>> No.13632665

>>13632129
Pynchon doesn't strike me as ever really having been a hermit. He'd had more in-the-world experience and done more social climbing by 24 than I'll probably get to do in all my life.

>> No.13632790

My favorite Pynchon story is that he went to Brian Wilson's house, Pynch was they were both introverts and Brian was spooked so they just sat in Brian's Arabian tent and didn't say anything for a few hours. Imagining two of my favorite creative Americans just sitting around uncomfortably is amusing.

>> No.13632797

>>13632790
Delete "Pynch was". Changed my mind about sentence structure mid-post and forgot to delete that.

>> No.13632860

>>13632790
my favorite Pynchon is Bleeding Edge

>> No.13632863

>>13630262
or you know, he could have just not wanted to write another GR? is it autism that makes it so hard to understand that writing is ultimately a process which the writer wants to perhaps ENJOY and in order to do so they'll try DIFFERENT things? I dunno it sound wild but maybe something to fucking CONSIDER??????

>> No.13632867

>>13630262
He got MKultra'd

>> No.13632872

>>13631163
911

>> No.13632901

>>13632860
Why?

>> No.13632961

>>13632863
impossibru

>> No.13633046

>>13630262
>Not a single sentence in Vineland sounds like it was written by Pynchon.

Bloom pls go. He clearly wrote it.

>> No.13633055

Shut up you fucking retard

>> No.13633096

>>13632901
dunno, I really like the New York vibe and all the cyberpunk elements, also the way he references new and old shit, also Maxine is hot as fuck

>> No.13633115

>>13633046
I get the feeling a lot of Vineland haters have merely skimmed it or for some reason have only retained the wacky bits. It has really great passages.

>> No.13633118

>>13632100
Because he's good at maths

>> No.13633121

>>13632064
Look at the dedication

>> No.13633135

>>13632790
Also apparently Brian spilled his spaghetti setting the thing up because he heard pynch was some guru

>> No.13633354

>>13633135
>he heard pynch was some guru
He heard correctly.

>> No.13633527

>>13631104
>BM was challenging
just stop reading, you'll never make it

>> No.13635153

>>13633096
those reasons are worse than your favorite pynchon

>> No.13635220

>>13630262
I think it's the same person. Some artists just have a lighter side. Why should everything they do be heady?

>> No.13635338

>>13630262
Against the Day is better than TCOL49

>> No.13636281

>>13631128
Give it a try! I don't know if I've ever enjoyed a book more. Something you can cuddle up with in bed. It just encloses you in warmth. And as an American with an interest in my country's past, it puts a very interesting spin on a few things.
I'm waiting until winter to give it a second read-through.

>> No.13636433

>>13630262
logo stop posting

>> No.13636437

What does Pynchon think about 13% of pop. committing 50% of crime?

>> No.13637353

>>13630262
Vineland, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge are all dangerously redpilled. It's the same Pynchon, you're just a shitty reader.

The one thing that explains the difference between Gravity's Rainbow and his later work is the death of Richard Farina.

>> No.13637742

I really liked Inherent Vice, going to stary Lot 49 now. What should I read after? Jump straight into GR or should I continue to ease myself in?

>> No.13637755

>>13637742
Lot 49 is like the shareware edition of GR it's a good primer, though I would suggest giving V. a shot first if you have the time, although it's probably his worst

>> No.13637766

>>13637742
HEY GUYS WHAT SHOULD I EAT? SHOULD I CONTINUE BREATHING? SHOULD MY NEURONS KEEP FIRING?

>> No.13637821

>>13631100
>reddit

>> No.13637873

>>13630262
I agree with Pynchon, Lot 49 is his least good book.

You must consider that after GR, he had more than a decade of writer’s block, even wrote letters to friends where he calls himself a one-hit-wonder. He had to come up with a way to follow up GR somehow, and it couldn’t be by going further in the frenetic Thomas Wolfe direction. You may also consider the ever present influence of Hemingway, one of Pynch’s favorites, whose inspiration is evident in GR, though his simplistic prose is not. Perhaps Pynchon thought that the only way to go after GR was further into the concise, humble prose style of Hemingway. Against the Day you are wrong on, everything after that I chalk up to old age and the fact that he probably doesn’t have the same burning to desire to prove himself anymore.

>> No.13638203

can I get a TLDR on entropy before I give GR a go?

>> No.13638262

>>13638203
Entropy increases and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

>> No.13638277

>>13630262
>>13630288
This. Basically, TP spent the better half of the late 20th century literally doing nothing (he admits to a “decades long” blockage in just one of the letters ive read). If the better sections of M&D were started around the time he was working on GR, CoL49, and whatever book never came out, that would perfectly account for this inconsistency in terms of quality. Vineland is simply where he dropped off in this regard; I think it really is seperate by decades comparatively; and by that point he was kind of spent. Sure, Against the Day might swim against such a reading, but he’d also have something like twenty years to refocus and revist his writing, especially in light of the blockage, he learned his lesson, etc. Vineland really isn’t this wrench-in-the-machine people make it out to be, and the mere suggestion of Pynchon authorial conspiracy dates back to V. Ask yourself, would you be motivated to organically think through the possible conspiratorial angles of, say, Toni Morrison?

But of course everybody knows TP is Wanda Tinasky, or rather, Wanda Tinasky is TP, who is simply not Bill Murray.

>> No.13638295

>>13638203
Entropy=transformation

>> No.13638298

>>13638277
Vineland's great

>> No.13638303

>>13638277
Also sounds like he worked on GR, M&D and AtD at the same time

>> No.13638424

>want to into Pynchon
>want to just dive in to the big 3
>feel like I should probably start reading the smaller novels first

any I can definitely avoid without missing out on too much?

>> No.13638601
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13638601

>>13638277

>> No.13638611

>>13630262
Should I read Pynchon?

>> No.13638614

>>13638611
No

>> No.13638628

>>13638614
I'll start with Mason & Dixon.

>> No.13638632

>>13638424
just dive in...starting with the smaller novels is for cucks...GR is his master piece and the novel he was born to write

>> No.13638647

>>13638632
I dunno you save a lot of time reading TCOL49 first..

>> No.13638706
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13638706

>>13631762