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/lit/ - Literature

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3103864 No.3103864 [Reply] [Original]

what the fuck am i reading

>> No.3103870

a book

>> No.3103874
File: 210 KB, 800x782, der_Fünffachnullpunkt.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3103874

you might be put off by the obscurity of some of the references. you might wonder why the plot wanders around like a drunken duck. you might wonder about the songs.

if you don't like it, go read something else. in a few years' time, when you're bored with conventional narratives, you'll be back.

>> No.3103887

>>3103864

idk how far you are into the book, op, but i've only got about 100 pages left, and i'm pretty impressed.

wasn't expecting the amount of feels i got over the course of reading it, and--while it was certainly challenging--it wasn't as hard to read as i thought it was going to be, and most of the time it was laugh out loud funny.

>>3103874

^this bro's right though. if you aren't into it, you aren't going to be. it's pretty crazy all the way through. almost an exercise in anti-narrative.

>> No.3103900

Just an idea. If you are able to to do this, maybe give it a try. Read it only when you're high. Pynchon wrote lots of it blazed and I find reading Pynchon you appreciate it so much more.

Most people would say "everything's better on weed though" I don't think this is the case for literature, sure for music but weed put's your expectations a lot higher and lot's of book's can become hit and miss.

Pay great attention to it, there's not that much "wtf!" in the book. It's pretty much like reading about a universe that's laws are different than our's, it's like reading while you're dreaming.

If it's too bland "sober" then you have to add some spices to it. Just like with food if something is bland you add some spices, nothing wrong with that, it's natural to experiment and try and enhance flavors.

>> No.3103906

reading it right now--got about 200 pages left. I think it's quite brilliant, but definitely about as difficult as Finnegans Wake was for me to get through.
Definitely something I'll need to read again in a few years.

>> No.3103910

>>3103900
Actually, I agree with this. I move a little slower with it stoned, but a lot of it resonates a bit more strongly.

>> No.3103916
File: 61 KB, 600x600, mandala_schwarzkommando.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3103916

>>3103906
you are going to fucking hate the ending.

>> No.3103935

ITT: pretentious wankers who make vague statements and pretend to understand what Pynchon meant, when in reality they know fuck all about it. "Herp derp read it high" "hero derp itzz lyk reading a dream" "herp derp I read finnigunz wake and dis iz jus' az hard, I'm so smart".

None of you understand this book. If you do give me the main theme of the book or maybe even a couple of themes, provide some quotes that back this up then analyze and make sense of that quote without going off in a random tangent about something else or being vague in your analysis of the quote.

GR and many other novels by Mr. Pinecone have been written to troll academia. He's man of hard science, not obscure word vomit.

>> No.3103936

>>3103910
It's good that you move slower because if you miss even the tiniest thing's you can get out of the world and it just becomes pages of maths.

In no way am I telling everyone to do it, it's just an Idea I had that I would like to do if I could smoke weed more.

>> No.3103954

>>3103935
Oh the irony. You're taking it way too seriously. We're just writing how we felt reading it. It's not THIS IS RIGHT, THIS IS WRONG, I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG

It's OH I GOT THIS FROM IT AND YOU GO THAT? WELL THAT'S INTERESTING

The giant octopus as an example felt like I was reading something out of a dream. We never said we understood what Pynchon meant, we just wrote what we felt.

>> No.3103967
File: 219 KB, 1035x772, Mission_HillJim_of_Mission_Hill_by_Skypher.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3103967

>>3103935
>implying I implied that I understood Finnegans Wake.

>> No.3103977

>>3103936
I smoke pretty frequently; probably about 30% of my reading it has been at least mildly stoned.

>> No.3103975

>>3103954

Oh the irony, you just confirmed my statement. None of you understand it and you just interpret it to suit yourselves. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it's what literature is about but there has to be some laws otherwise I could say that for example all the characters in Tom sawyer where really cats. Get what im saying, back up your "feels" with quotes and explain how they relate to what you are saying

>> No.3103983

>>3103967
This thread is full of pseudo-intellectuals, why the fuck would you read a 700+ page book you did not understand? Fuck lit is the worst board ever.

>> No.3103988

>>3103975
you're a wanker and the type no one likes to talk to because your head is in your ass.

>> No.3103991

>>3103977
I cant focus on reading at all when stoned. I get halfway through a paragraph before I forget the start of it, and by the time I reach the end of it I have forgotten I am reading completely, and I'm lost in a daydream. This happens every single time I try to read stoned.

>> No.3103994

>>3103991
Start with something easy and you'll probably become more accustomed to it. Like Vonnegut short stories or something.

>> No.3103997
File: 67 KB, 310x447, Salvador Dali - Shocked he is Salvador Dali.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3103997

>>3103991
I don't smoke a thing actually.

I am LCD though

>> No.3104020

>>3103988
You're a wanker and the person no one likes to talk to because you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to the book you are reading. I'm still waiting for some sort of grounded analysis on maybe just ONE fucking theme throughout this book and a quote to back it up followed by a clear and succinct interpretation of that quote. None of you can do it because none of you understand what the fuck this book is about and you go around by making vague claims about the book like "it's dream like". Pull your head out of your ass and make an actual statement about this fucking book.

>> No.3104030

>>3104020
it's about V2 rockets... duh!

>> No.3104033

>>3103935
>>3103975
>>3104020

I love this guy, calling you faggots on your bullshit. No one really understands this book

>> No.3104039

>>3104020
I wrote you a big response man but google chrome crashed. In a way I wrote to you, you just didn't get it.

Can you give me your analysis of the book? What the definitive themes of the book are, what Pynchon intended.

You're asking all the questions and not giving anything in return.

>> No.3104046

>>3104033
Maybe only Pynchon could really understand it and then the rest of us could get close. We would have to try and take away our subjectivity, the way we have been conditioned to respond to things differently.

>> No.3104056

>>3104039
No I can't, because I do not understand this book, thats the point I'm making and I doubt you people understand it either, I'm not claiming to understanding it I'm just stating you guys do not either an every person I've spoken to about it is just very vague and they step around answering any real questions about this book. So please, teach me your learned Pynchon ways....

>> No.3104061

>>3104056
Sorry for the bad spelling on that last post I'm posting from a blackberry ATM

>> No.3104076

>>3103935

You are the biggest fucking idiot in this entire thread.

Please show where ANYONE said that they 'understood' GR, as if it's something that requires understanding.

>> No.3104092

>>3104056
Again, you're trying to imply I or who ever posted in this thread made it seem like you were the Pynchon masters. We were just writing how we felt about it.

There are all of the obvious themes.
War, Death, Fear, Paranoia, Sex, Change is constant, Nostalgia, Conspiracy, whatever else.

Anything I associate with the themes is just me putting my ideas onto it, I have no real idea what Pynchon intended. How are we to know if Pynchon made things seem obvious to cover up his own ideas, so that in a way he is saying how he feels about certain things, but no one but himself would be able to know. Or that he made things seem really complicated so we wouldn't notice how simple they are.

It's a huge book and is a lot harder for me to sit back and write about than say Inherent Vice. For one I got lost at times and secondly it's been a while since I read it.

I don't know what exactly Pynchon intended for a lot of it and I never have said I do know.

What I got out of it was a real feeling of nostalgia, I cried at around 200 pages and I've never cried reading before. I got a sense of change being inevitable, everyone knowing this, but wishing it wasn't, feeling at times like when having sex that you're paused in time and everyone wants experiences like that always.

"It's pretty much like reading about a universe that's laws are different than our's, it's like reading while you're dreaming."
Pynchon could have also put the magical realism parts in the book to show that Pynchon believes there is a big possibility that much more shit is going on out there that we know and or to show examples of how crazy existence is.

I don't know EXACTLY what it's about and I don't want to, it's a fiction novel, like all fiction it's fantasy and I liked the fantasies I came up with.

>> No.3104098

>>3104076
People in this thread acted like Rey had a bunch of profound explanations for what it meant. Pseudo-intellectualisim

>> No.3104105

>>3104092
You cried... Seriously

What paragraphs made you cry? Can you tell me why they made you cry? What they meant to you? I'm genrally interested in what people think of this book. To me it's just nonsense and an obviouse shit poke at academics who analyze things. It makes no sense...... At all.

>> No.3104109

>>3104092

"I got a sense of change being inevitable, everyone knowing this, but wishing it wasn't,"

Read Stephen kings "IT" he gets the theme across with a much better narrative.

>> No.3104128

>>3104105
I don't have my company man, my friends borrowing it.

It was a chapter when Slothtrop was about to leave a hotel everyone had stayed. Pynchon was writing super nostalgic and I was just liked "fuck this is the most beautiful chapter ever" then a couple tears started to come.

I think i cried because well one Slothtrop was all sad and secondly because I've always found the end of things to be sad. For example, when you see an old run down house in a street and you think about maybe a family lived there and what the house looked like, now it's empty.

Also I had read up to the 100 page mark atleast 4 times before I got there, so I was like "Finally you blow me away Pynchon you cocktease!"

Come on man. Not to sound offensive, even though you have been offensive to me, it sounds like you haven't been reading it closely enough. You have to concentrate like a mother fucker to really get into the book, for me anyways, of course there will be people that found it easy, we're all different after all.

There's a war going on, negativity is in the air. Pretty much all of the social order is changed. Bombs going off every now and then becomes normal, you have to imagine what it would like to be in the setting.

I again, understand maybe 20% of Gravity's Rainbow, probably less.

>> No.3104133

>>3104109
Is it horror? I'm not much of a fan, to sound like a pussy, which I'm fine, I just assume I'll get trolled, I'm kind of sensitive to demented things.

>> No.3104140
File: 27 KB, 298x333, kafkaesque.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3104140

>>3104056
How about a theme: war is arbitrary wanking. Evidence: can take a passage from pretty much any page.
I prefer to not speculate on themes of books I haven't finished yet (like I said, I still have 200 pages left). It's a novel that is difficult to situate and ground yourself in; I never said I understood it fully, but I started it and I'm going to finish it. There are little gems throughout the book even if a lot of the larger stuff is lost on the reader.
Either way, if you couldn't pick out a theme and point to some page numbers you're just as much of an asshole as the people you're calling on to provide you with a nice little e-notes reading of it.

>> No.3104145

>>3104109
err wtf? Did you seriously just compare Stephen King and Pynchon? You do realise one's a storyteller and the other's a writer, right?

>> No.3104148

lol at everyone in this thread acting like the book is hard to understand. it's entertaining and funny as fuck and makes some good points. i typed quotes below so that the pretentious jackasses calling the other pretentious jackasses pretentious jackasses can realize that 1) i'm not a pretentious jackass and 2) if i am, i at least read the book and definitely fucking understood it and you can go to hell.

the book is doing a few things:

1) marrying high and low culture. this is why there are so many songs, limericks, dick/poop jokes, etc. right alongside intense reflections on war, violence, love, sex, etc. my favorite example is the chapter when slothrop escapes from a squad of german fighter pilots in a hot air balloon by throwing pies at them.

2) poking fun at the absurd political machine that war is. as clausewitz wrote, war is simply an extension of politics. one quote--of many--from gravity's rainbow that illustrates this is: "it means this war was never really political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology . . . by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, 'money be damned, the very life of [insert name of nation] is at stake,' but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, i need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more . . . "

3) poking fun at all the paranoia surrounding the political machine and war, especially in the atomic age--example: all of the "proverbs for paranoids" and every time they refer to someone as being either a "novice" paranoid or criticize them for not being "paranoid in [their] heart--in this line of work, that's a disaster."

cont.

>> No.3104152

>>3104148

4) proposing a relationship between many high concepts such as violence, death, politics, war, religion, and sex. there's a pretty solid love story buried in the book--"they're in love. fuck the war." "you're catching the war . . . don't leave me."--which, in the later chapters (regarding jessica's feelings for roger mexico in peace time), directly relates the concepts of love and war. marvy visits a prostitute: "she watches marvy's face as he pays monika, watches him in this primal american act, paying, more deeply himself than when coming, or asleep, or maybe even dying." sex, money, death. there are more--ridiculous things like pirana filled dildos, and serious things like meditations on human beings treated as pure information by the "system," the "they"--but i don't feel like typing all of them.

5) acting as an exercise in "anti-narrative" and conditioning the reader to see what he wants to see, and then poking fun at the reader for finding meaning in it. i feel like with the following two quotes from the book, pynchon straight up tells you this is what he's doing:

"if there is something comforting--religious if you want--about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long."

cont.

>> No.3104155

>>3104152

"the rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of the earth, at the mercy of a gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in kute korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from earth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here--kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each deeper significance and trying to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret function whose name, like the permuted names of god, cannot be spoken . . . to make sense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replication, so much waste . . . "

6) believing in the power of love as a weapon against the political machine. along with the roger/jessica story (which can be read as a tragic warning), there is another short portrait of a composer, gustav, who says, "the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the world. through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs."

I HOPE THIS HELPS

>> No.3104156

>>3104145
Pretty sure he was talking about the specific theme I was talking about. Fuck why does everyone have to add assumptions on to everything. We all come on here and act like office bitches bitching at smoke break.

>> No.3104166

>>3104148
>>3104152
>>3104155
Nice work. There are loads of things you missed but I'm sure you know that.

>> No.3104169

>>3104128
I'm sorry if I insulted you, you actually sound like a really nice guy man (and im not bejng sarcastic) It seems you take books in on an emotional level and that's great. I might have to give the book another go, I try to hard to understand a book as much as possible and GR didn't really sit well with me, I was lost for pages at a time and nothing was resonating with me at all. I guess it's one of those books you really just have to read just straight out with no preconceptions of what it's actually about. I guess in a way literary criticism kind of ruins literature because it takes the personal experience out of the book by trying to slam objective truths created by scholars as the only correct way to read into the text.

>> No.3104170

>>3104155
>>3104152
>>3104148
I am going to screenshot this so I could look at it when I am reading it. Thanks dude. I have not been in this thread at all but for some reason when I see a large block of text on /lit/ I am obligated to read. Thanks again

>> No.3104172

>>3104166

thx. yeah, obviously there are. there's tons more shit in the book. but 1) i typed kind of a lot and was getting tired of it, and 2) i'm sure i didn't even catch everything when i read it.

i just want everyone on here to cut the shit. the book really isn't that hard to understand if you just fucking concentrate. and just because you didn't enjoy it or you can't concentrate doesn't mean that the people who say they enjoy it are lying.

>> No.3104173

>>3104170

very welcome, my dude. don't limit yourself to just those things i listed. there's plenty more in to discover in that book.

>> No.3104175

>>3104156
omf i don't even.

So Pynchon would analyse the subject, any subject, at the same level as King?

learn2subtext. King is readable like branded packaging, man.

>> No.3104181
File: 59 KB, 1551x760, Gravity Poop.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3104181

>>3104173
Of course. I believe someone on /lit/ described Pynchon as being a Rorschach test for readers and I could totally see Gravitys Rainbow as being exactly that. I am happy you used quotes as well. You never see anyone use quotes around here. Here is the screencap for others.

>> No.3104186

>>3104181

i think that's a really neat way to look at it. almost like a choose-your-own-adventure book. it's so massive in scope, that every reader will notice different things--or, to stick with your metaphor, see different shapes in the ink.

and you're welcome for the quotes. for whatever reason, when i read GR, i was compelled to annotate, and i've always kept my dog-eared, marked up copy close by.

>> No.3104190

>>3104169
Well that's ok man. It's pretty much the natural thing to do on 4chan. Saying someone is a faggot is pretty much empty but at the same time it doesn't mean one has to act like the norm.

What you just said is pretty much what I was trying to say but not actually saying it. I was pretty much wanting to say, why the fuck does it matter so much? read it and what you get out of it is your's and your's only, you won't ever meet two people that read the same book, in other words we all get completely different things out of the same thing.

I wish you luck with the book, just remember you have to pay extreme attention and maybe keeping a notepad would be a good idea. Write down your feelings while reading it. If you can't do it, try reading V. first or Inherent Vice or Crying of lot 49, all amazing books.

>>3104172
Yeah that's what I figured, I just didn't know how to say you couldn't be bothered, without implying you were lazy or something. I loved that pie throwing part as well. For some reason I was kind of thinking of Jurassic park when they were on that tram going through the jungle haha.

>> No.3104194

>>3104175
Pynchon is not god. He's a human being. He isn't perfect at everything, he doesn't have knowledge of everything and can't explain every single theme better than anyone like King.

I've never, ever read anything by King. I'm just saying the Pynchon is fucking awesome but that doesn't mean others could not analyse any subject better. Also what you're saying is subjective as fuck anyways.

>> No.3104196

>>3103900
> weed
> put's
> lot's
> book's
> that's
> our's

Not even once. Sorry to break it to you, dude, but that chronic seems to have turned your brain into mush.

>> No.3104197

>>3104196
A few days ago did you do the same to another thing I wrote and I asked you to help me out and you did? If so, sorry man, I'm still learning. My grammar was shit before I started smoking.

>> No.3104199

>>3103900
stoner pride XD

>> No.3104201

>>3104033
>No one really understands this book

It's a simple book, there's not much there to 'understand'. Its problem is that it is extremely poorly edited, which is why reading it is a pain.

>> No.3104203

>>3104201
I'd say the same for Inherent Vice. So many editing mistakes.

>> No.3104206

>>3104148
Then again, that section you quote is out of context. The 'war is a front for the advancement of technology' was spouted by Enzian, the Schwartzcommando who was at that point nearly delirious on drugs, popping some obscure german surplus speed 'like popcorn at the theater'

>> No.3104211

>>3104199
I don't understand why would you ever make this joke in a Pynchon thread.

>> No.3104215

>>3104211
Who......................cares.............

>> No.3104222

I broke page 555 not too long ago and while I don't pretend to understand it, my take on it so far is that the main theme of all is how everything is interconnected. Pynchon, however, uses different terminology as he defines the interconnectedness of everything as 'Paranoia'. I came to this conclusion from when he cleverly defined 'Paranoia' by defining 'Anti-paranoia' as 'the feeling that nothing is connected to anything'. (can't remember which page, but i distinctly remember being struck by how clever it was, defining something by defining it's 'anti'). Anyway, we see this interconnectedness in several forms, notably the structure of the plot, where we are presented various scenes that seem random at first, but later it becomes obvious that they all connect in sometimes surprising ways. Around page 555, when Pirate Prentice is in that double+ -agent convention, a reference is made by one of the characters to 'that dodo guy', connecting an earlier vignette about one of Katje's ancestors who helped hunt dodos into extinction. When i first read that chapter, about 110 pages in, I remember thinking WTF? a sudden digression into a backstory of a character's ancestor from the 1700's who used to hunt dodos? lolsorandum, but then I got to see how it fit.

>> No.3104224

>>3104222
A-and it's not just the plot, its the metaphors he uses too. I can't remember exactly but there was a really beautiful comparison between something - i think it was a symbol for infinity, a snake eating its own tail - and the molecular structure of a certain chemical. But yeah, it's an interesting read, and not as hard as I thought once you focus and get used to the prose style. Still it would probably require several readings to really delve into what it has to offer. My complaint is mainly with some flab that could've been edited out and some parts that are crushingly boring and how sometimes Pynchon's drug use can be seen directly in the text when he delves into hopelessly abstract passages where not even he, I imagine, can know what he meant when he wrote it.

>> No.3104237

>>3104224

infinity abounds in GR. in my edition of the book, the penguin classics deluxe paperback, the snake metaphor you're talking about is at the top of page 419.

>> No.3104240

>>3104237
actually, here:

“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . .”

it was on goodreads, if you're curious as to how i typed it that fast.

>> No.3104250

>>3104240
Yes, thank you! And for the curious, the 'System' he talks about here is Big Business. It really is insane how businesses can't be content to maintain a level of profit, but actually expect themselves, and have built into themselves, an inherent voracity which demands that they multiply their profits and earnings yearly. And since there's only a limited amount of resources on the earth, it violates the 'Cycle' of give and take.

Thanks for posting it

>> No.3104259

>>3104105
I found the chapter, I downloaded a pdf version, it's a little bit into the chapter, page 203 to the end of the episode, just something about it at the time was really movie, rain always really moves me as well.

Why here? Why should the rainbow edges of what is almost on him be
rippling most intense here in this amply coded room? say why should walking in here be almost the same as entering the Forbidden itself—here are the same long rooms, rooms of old paralysis and evil distillery, of condensations and residues you are afraid to smell from forgotten corruptions, rooms full of upright gray feathered statues with wings spread, indistinct faces in dust—rooms fall of dust that will cloud the shapes of inhabitants around the corners or deeper inside, that
will settle on their black formal lapels, that will soften to sugar the white faces, white shirt fronts, gems and gowns, white hands that move too quickly to be seen . . . what game do They deal? What passes are these, so blurred, so old and perfect?

“Fuck you,” whispers Slothrop. It’s the only spell he knows, and a pretty good all-purpose one at that. His whisper is baffled by the thousands of tiny rococo surfaces. Maybe he’ll sneak in tonight—no not at night—but sometime, with a bucket and brush, paint FUCK YOU in a balloon coming out the mouth of one of those little pink shepherdesses there. . . .

>> No.3104262

>>3104259
He steps back out, backward out the door, as if half, his ventral half, were
being struck in kingly radiance: retreating from yet facing the Presence feared and wanted. Outside, he heads down toward the quay, among funseekers, swooping white birds, an incessant splat of seagull shit. As I walk along the Bwa-deboolong with an independent air . . . Saluting everybody in uniform, getting it to a reflex, don’t ask for extra trouble, try for invisible . . . bringing his arm each time a bit more stupidly to his side. Clouds now are coming up fast, out of the sea. No sign of Tantivy out here, either.

Ghosts of fishermen, glassworkers, fur traders, renegade preachers, hilltop patriarchs and valley politicians go avalanching back from Slothrop here, back to 1630 when Governor Winthrop came over to America on the Arbella, flagship of a great Puritan flotilla that year, on which the first American Slothrop had been a mess cook or something—there go that Arbella and its whole fleet, sailing backward in formation, the wind sucking them east again, the creatures leaning from the margins of the unknown sucking in their cheeks, growing crosseyed with the effort, in to black deep hollows at the mercy of teeth no longer the milky molars of cherubs, as the old ships zoom out of Boston Harbor, back across an Atlantic whose currents and swells go flowing and heaving in reverse . . . a redemption of every mess cook who ever slipped and fell when the deck made an unexpected move, the night’s stew collecting itself up out of the planks and off the indignant shoes of the more elect, slithering in a fountain back into the pewter kettle as the servant himself staggers upright again and the vomit he slipped on goes gushing back into the mouth that spilled it . . . Presto change-o! Tyrone Slothrop’s English again! But it doesn’t seem to be redemption exactly that this they have in mind. . . .

>> No.3104265

>>3104262
>>3104259
He’s on a broad cobbled esplanade, lined with palms shifting now to coarsegrained black as clouds begin to come over the sun. Tantivy isn’t out on the beach, either—nor are any of the girls. Slothrop sits on a low wall, feet swinging,
watching the front, slate, muddy purple, advancing from the sea in sheets, in drifts. Around him the air is cooling. He shivers. What are They doing? He gets back to the Casino just as big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks on the pavement, inviting him to look down at
the bottom of the text of the day, where footnotes will explain all.

He isn’t about to look. Nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day’s end. He just runs. Rain grows in wet crescendo. His footfalls send up fine flowers of
water, each hanging a second behind his flight. It is flight. He comes in speckled, pied with rain, begins a frantic search through the great inert Casino, starting
again with the same smoky, hooch-fumed bar, proceeding through the little theatre, where tonight will play an abbreviated version of L’Inutil Precauzione (that imaginary opera with which Rosina seeks to delude her guardian in The Barber of Seville), into its green room where girls, a silkenness of girls, but not the three Slothrop wants most to see, tease hair, arrange garters, glue on eyelashes, smile at Slothrop. No one has seen Ghislaine, Françoise, Yvonne. From another room the orchestra rehearses a lively Rossini tarantella.

>> No.3104268

>>3104265
>>3104262
>>3104259
The reeds are all something like a half tone flat. At once Slothrop understands that he is surrounded by women who have lived a good fraction of their lives at war and under occupation, and for whom people have been dropping out of sight every day . . . yes, in one or two pairs of eyes he finds an old and European pity, a look he will get to know, well before he loses his innocence and becomes one of them. . . .So he drifts, through the bright and milling gaming rooms, the dining hall and its smaller private satellites, busting up tête-à-têtes, colliding with waiters, finding only strangers wherever he looks.

And if you need help, well, Til help you. . . . Voices, music, the shuffling of cards all grow louder, more oppressive, till he stands looking into the Himmler-Spielsaal again, crowded now, jewels flashing, leather gleaming, roulette spokes whirling blurring—it’s here that saturation hits him, it’s all this playing games, too much of it, too many games: the nasal, obsessive voice of a croupier he can’t see—messieurs, mesdames, les jeux sont faits—is suddenly speaking out of the Forbidden Wing directly to him, and about what Slothrop has been playing against the invisible House, perhaps after all for his soul, all day—terrified he turns, turns out into the rain again where the electric lights of the Casino, in full holocaust, are glaring off the glazed cobbles. Collar up, Bloat’s hat down over his ears, saying shit every few minutes, shivering, his back aching from that fall out of that tree, he goes stumbling along in the rain.

>> No.3104270

>>3104268
>>3104265
>>3104262
>>3104259
He thinks he might begin to cry. How did this all turn against him so fast? His friends old and new, every last bit of paper and clothing connecting him to what he’s been, have
just, nicking, vanished. How can he meet this with any kind of grace? Only much later, worn out, snuffling, cold and wretched in his prison of soggy Army wool, does he think of Katje.

He gets back to the Casino near midnight, her hour, tramping upstairs leaving wet footprints behind, loud as a washing machine— stops at her door, rain pattering onto the carpet, afraid even to knock. Has she been taken too? Who’s waiting behind the door and what machinery have They brought with Them?

But she’s heard him, and opens with a dimpled, chiding smile for being so wet. “Tyrone, I missed you.” He shrugs, convulsive, helpless, showering both of them. “It’s the only place I
knew to come.” Her smile slowly unpurses. Gingerly he steps across the sill then, not sure if it’s door or high window, into her deep room.

>> No.3104300

I gave up on GR at about page 200. I am just not smart enough to either understand either the concepts or what pynchon was trying to say in some parts of the book.

What is his point when he talks about effect coming before cause or being switched? When would this happen in real life?

I think Pavlov's dogs were mentioned but it's the bell that's doing it, so that's not hard to understand. Also related is Slothrop's boners making rockets fall, and the rockets only making noise after they hit something.

I'll try it again another time. I think the worst mistake I do whenever I read a Pynchon book for the first time is try to figure out how it's all connected. I'm rereading V right now and just enjoying the ride.

>> No.3104319

>>3104250
but he's also talking entropy which is like his main thing I think

all systems are only buying time, tiny desperate fractions showing a profit applies to plants and man and earth and stars and all

>> No.3104320

>>3104300
>When would this happen in real life?
It is supposed to have happened with the V-2 rockets, when the sound of the rocket arriving came After the explosion because the rocket traveled faster than the speed of sound.

>Slothrop's boners making rockets fall
that's what Pointsman and co. don't really know, if Slothrop's boners make rockets fall or if rockets falling give Slothrop boners.

But yeah, I think once you've read enough, once you accumulate enough peripheral knowledge, you'll be able to enjoy this more. Although, I do understand a lot of it, despite this being my third book since I began reading again.

>> No.3104466

What do you guys think Pynchon will write about next?

>> No.3104467

>>3104466
blueberries

>> No.3104475

>>3104467
If blueberries must be written about, Pynchon is the man to do it.

>> No.3104800

>>3103874
>when you're bored with conventional narratives
>implying that actually happens to people who aren't desperate to eat up hipster garbage

>> No.3106020

>>3104800
It's natural to want change, to explore, to become bored of something.