What the fug am I in for?

[Anonymous No.21275899]

I just read the dust jacket and kinda got a little hard ngl.
>It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.
>Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.
>With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.
>Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?
>Hey. Who wants to know?

[Anonymous No.21275902]

>>21275899
I already had a false start with GR, so I figured I'd give this a shot before circling back.

[Anonymous No.21275908]

>>21275902
What other kinds of books do you like? Can’t say whether you’d like it without knowing that.

[Anonymous No.21275960]

>>21275908
Well I like most of the /lit/ classics. Dostoyevsky, Melville, Cormac, Houellbecq, Delillo, DFW, Vonnegut, some Greeks, some Germans. Really, GR was one of the only books I've dropped about 1/3 of the way in. I think I was too busy with other things and so unfamiliar with his style that I got filtered, but I want to try again.
Bleeding Edge being a period piece set in 2001 appeals to me, and it's focus on technology and the internet is something I like. Cyberpunk adjacent or something. I was reading some excerpts from GR in another Pynchon thread and something clicked with his style, so I think I understand his voice better now.

[Anonymous No.21276515]

>>21275960
Did you read GR using a companion or did you just go in raw?

[Anonymous No.21276530]

[Anonymous No.21276554]

>>21276515
I was reading it with a companion, which might actually have been my problem.

[Anonymous No.21276557]

>>21276530
kek, sold.

[Anonymous No.21276584]

>>21276554
How so? I was planning reading it myself soon, haven't decided if i want to just plow through without using the companion or not

[Anonymous No.21276653]

>>21276584
idk, makes it feel kind of like homework. I don't need to know every autistic reference to 1930's 1 hit wonder juke box songs or random tv trivia. can always focus on the companion on a second read anyway.

[Anonymous No.21276661]

>>21276584
The companions are mostly trivia and autistic from what I have seen. Just read it, he gives you everything you need to understand it right there in the book, but it will take more than one read to understand. Enjoy the ride the first time through, don't spoil it with autism.

[Anonymous No.21277129]

>>21276653
>>21276661
Thanks boys appreciate it. Been looking forward to get into it

[Anonymous No.21277155]

>>21275899
If you can stand obnoxious new york hipsters and yuppies and cringe-worthy but accurate pwning n00bs talk then it's solid

[Anonymous No.21277362]

>>21275902
If you don't like it then check out against the day next, worked for me

[Anonymous No.21277380]

There's a milf footjob.

[Anonymous No.21277407]

>>21275960
>Quit GR
FIltered brainlet faggot doesn't get to give advise to others

[Anonymous No.21277410]

>>21277407
Thats the hardest part of the book though...

[Anonymous No.21277460]

>Old man writes about the internet
Yeah, no thanks

[Anonymous No.21277468]

>>21277460
Tommy Pinecone wrote the book on the internet you little crotch goblin, show some respect

[Anonymous No.21277499]

>>21275960
GR is also a period piece desu.

[Anonymous No.21277530]

>>21275960
GR inspired Neuromancer

[Anonymous No.21277544]

>>21275899
>What the fug am I in for?
Just read the book

[Anonymous No.21277584]

>>21275899
>hurr muh 9/11
will Amerilards ever shut up about it?

[Anonymous No.21278214]

>>21277530
And Gibson in his ignorance showed a great deal of potential, but it turns out Gibson is about as good of a reader as he is a writer, or perhaps is just a pragmatist and realized that his life would be a whole lot better if he went scifi instead of lit.
>>21277584
Never. We realized where the brits and euros went wrong, rent free is the way to colonize the world.

[Anonymous No.21278726]

>>21277460
He probably went on ARPANET.

[Anonymous No.21279661]

>>21277499
Not in the same period genius...

[Anonymous No.21279671]

>>21279661
Obviously, genius.

[Anonymous No.21279684]

>>21279671
Then why did you even bring it up? It's irrelevant to what I was saying.

[Anonymous No.21280555]

>>21276530
Holy kino. Is this real?

[Anonymous No.21280627]

I'm a brainlet and I love Thomas Pynchon. I think he's just really funny and it's very rare to read a single page that doesn't make me smile. I don't "get" all the deep stuff people say his books are "about", but when the characters with funny names do zany shit I just chuckle and want to read more.
Like I was reading Gravity's Rainbow today and there's this scene where the guy goes to the girl's house only her mother lives there too and she starts serving him all this weird candy and I can imagine the situation and my own grandmother was like that old lady.
It's just good stuff, you know?

[Anonymous No.21280763]

>>21280627
Pynchon’s my favorite writer for sure, because my favorite thing in books is goofs, gags, jokes and rambunctious behavior, and his books are filled to the brim with this. Every novel is like one of those novelty snake cans, you open the book and POP you get a face fulla snakes and you fall back cackling. The mad mind, the crack genius, to do it! And then you think “hmmm what’s he gonna do next, this trickster” and you pick the book back up and BZZZZ you get a shock and “hahahaha” you've been pranked again by the old Pynchmeister, that card. “Did that Pynch?” he says, laughing “yukyukyukyuk”. Watch him as he shoves a pair of plastic buck teeth right up his mouth and displays em for you – left, right, center – “You like these? Do I look handsome?” Pulls out a mirror. “Ah!” Hand to naughty mouth. And you're on your ass again laughing as he snaps his suspenders, exits stage right, and reappears hauling a huge golden gong.. it makes you just say wow

[Anonymous No.21280799]

>>21280763

[Anonymous No.21280812]

I heard Pynchon browses lit

[Anonymous No.21280829]

>>21280812
he browses the internet while being lit
he does not come to /lit/

[Anonymous No.21280840]

>>21280829
No, he's been here

[Anonymous No.21281189]

>>21280812
My theory is that Pynchon is the guy who makes "x days until Avatar 2" threads on /tv/

[Anonymous No.21281199]

>>21280812
I wouldn't worry about it