[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 32 KB, 315x475, 2794.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7121285 No.7121285 [Reply] [Original]

Am I too dumb for Pynchon if I can't make sense of the first 2 pages of this supposedly easy-going book?

>> No.7121287

>>7121285
talentless hack

>> No.7121291

Take it sentence by sentence. Read and reread. It's in English, so you will get it eventually. I don't mean to be rude, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

>> No.7121304

>>7121285
You should probably try finishing the Harry Potter series at least if you're having trouble with the first two pages of Lot 49 lmao.

>> No.7121305

>>7121287
*talented hack

>> No.7121308

>>7121304
Already done that. :(

Should I try ASOIAF before?

>> No.7121314

>>7121291
>Take it sentence by sentence. Read and reread. It's in English, so you will get it eventually.
I'd love to see you try reading Finnegans Wake with that mentality.

Though Lot 49 is really straightforward so OP is kinda retarded.

>> No.7121323

>>7121314
Yeah, I was speaking specifically for 49.

>> No.7121358

>>7121285

Go to the warosu archive, search for the one thread on this (sorry, lost the link, but someone else will have it on the ready) and read whatever the one anon (cough cough) wrote about it.

You won't find that explanation of it from anywhere else.

>> No.7121384

Funny, I first tried Lot 49 in highschool by recommendation of a friend. I was baffled by my inability to read even one page.

You just aren't an experienced enough read. Read it aloud to yourself, the narrative voice is telling you a story, not giving you a report. There are shifts in perspective, tone, uses of stream of consciousness - compared to much literary fiction, it is pretty easy going, but for someone just getting into literature, or hopping over from Orwell, it will be no doubt tricky at first.

>> No.7121424

>>7121358
that Torquato Tasso business? it was barely anything. a nice connection, but not some key to understanding the novel like some here have said

>> No.7121432

>ONE summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party
self explanatory
>whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue
the tupperware party's hostess put too much alcohol in the fondue, and oedipa finds herself coming home tipsy
>to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity,
she has been named executor of this Pierce's will
>a California real estate mogul
pierce
>who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time
he lost $2m presumably in a gamble or bet, this shows his recklessness
>but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
$2m was nothing to him. executing his will, that is, giving what's due to who the departed choses to receive, is a very tough job, making the choice of picking oedipa all the more significant
>Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube,
she stands opposite a tv, turned off, the narrator suggests the tv is staring at her, perhaps because of the way she would be reflecting off the screen, similar to how light reflects off parts of the human eye in the process of vision
>spoke the name of God,
another way of putting, "God" oedipa said, presumably exasperation at pierce's death, and the task she's been giving
>tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work
trying to let her drunkenness push her reality out of the way, as one forgets their sorrows in a drink, but it did not work, she was not drunk enough, or the news was too large to simply forget,
>She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlan whose door had just been slammed,
this is stream of consciousness, a memory or imagination. pierce and oedipa had once been dating, and they had visited mazatlan. the door can be a flash of remembering an argument, the last time she saw him, it could be envisioning that door to the past being slammed, pierce is dead, mazatlan can only be a memory now, it could be something more pedestrian, just a memory of a door slamming
>it seemed forever,
seemed forever ago
>waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby;
more imagery, emphasis on how loud the slam was, reinforcing the idea it may be a flash of an argument
>a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west;
an odd, largely unexplained image, stream of consciousness, perhaps she and pierce met here, spent time here, perhaps it represents some wasted potential, the beautiful sunset, this perfect slope, and yet, fundamentally incompatible (also probably a real life location)
>a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra;
pierce's musical taste no doubt, high society connotations, dry, oedipa probably not a real fan of it

>> No.7121467

>a whitewashed bust
a bust, a statue generally of marble or clay or some stone depicting the head of a famous person, this also suggests pierce's high society ties
>of Jay Gould
Jay Gould, notorious railroad developer and businessman, made often a cartoon of the evil capitalist stereotype, aligns pierce with such a caricature
>that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she'd always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them.
mostly self explanatory, effectively confirms by the fear of the bust toppling on "them" that oedipa and pierce did in fact sleep together, sets up oedipa's general paranoia
>Was that how he'd died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only ikon in the house?
[Was that how he'd died, asleep, crushed by the one significant of danger in the house?] unluckily? also confirms pierce's adoration or at least interest in gould in specific. it is the only ikon in the house. this is no museum with all manner of busts representing all sorts of people
>That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless:
oedipa the goofball, out loud and helpless, she is an early 60's housewife, she knows she ought not to be laughing at this man's death, but she's helpless, it's funny
>You're so sick, Oedipa, she told herself,
out loud
>or the room, which knew.
from an observing eye it would seem she was addressing herself to something external when speaking out loud. the narrator jokes perhaps she was speaking to the room, and further, that the room already knows she's sick. delightful prose. jovial goofiness.

>> No.7121499

>>7121424

Torquato Tasso SOLVES the book. It's a puzzle.

>> No.7121504
File: 21 KB, 327x445, 2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7121504

>>7121285
Pynchon disowned the book because it didn't make any sense and confused readers, so don't feel bad. Just start with something more straightforward like Gravity's Rainbow.

>> No.7121510

>>7121499
WELL MEME'D FRIEND

>> No.7121511

>The letter was from
the letter naming her executor (or I suppose executrix!)
>the law firm of Warpe, Wist-full, Kubitschek and McMingus, of Los Angeles,
pynchonian world building, or information overloading. no matter how insignificant it is, if it can be named it probably will be. creates a 'maximalist' effect. a sea of information to root around in, never knowing which will come back and be important or which will never be mentioned again. an interesting asethetic no doubt, especially in the context of paranoid postmodernist detective stories.
>and signed by somebody named Metzger.
presumably one of pierce's lawyers and working through the warpe wistufll etc. firm
>It said Pierce had died back in the spring, and they'd only just now found the will.
s/e
>Metzger was to act as co-executor
metzger is to help oed
>and special counsel in the event of any involved litigation.
in the event of any complex legal work
>Oedipa had been named also to execute the will in a codicil dated a year ago.
codicil is an amendment to a will. it has been updated (a year ago) to include oedipa. she was not originally planned to be the executor but pierce went out of his way to make her it.
>She tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then.
s/e
>Through the rest of the afternoon,
a new sentence, but carrying on the last one's thought,
[She tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then] Through the rest of the afternoon, ... (and so on)
>through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines
kinneret among the pines, fictional californian town where oed lives. named in the style of old english native american speak.
>to buy ricotta
cheese
>and listen to the Muzak
muzak, corporate background music, the kind of stuff you hear on loop at a department store. elevator music, essentially.
>(today she came through the bead-curtained entrance
of the market
>around bar 4
musical measurement
>of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum
fictional orchestra, again, the naming, world building, the joke is of course who would ever be able to identify a muzak orchestra
>recording of the Vivaldi
Antonio Vivaldi, famous italian composer, (did not write anything for kazoo).
Kazoo Concerto,
>kazoos are a running joke of sorts in pynchon's works, that, in my best guess comes from his friend richard farina who died the same year lot 49 was published. farina was a folk singer (his wife was joan baez' sister) and used kazoos in his act to comic effect. if i'm not mistaken there's kazoo foolery in his novel as well, 'been down so long it looks like up to me'. gravity's rainbow also makes repeated mention of kazoos, and is dedicated to farina as well. pynchon's forward for been down so long describes the book as coming on like a kazoo orchestra in perfect pitch. it seems just a sort of in joke, a lot of laughing at how silly the kazoo really sounds.

>> No.7121546

>Boyd Beaver, soloist);
absurd world building, again, who has ever stopped to wonder who the soloist on a muzak orchestra was, let alone a kazoo orchestra. do those exist? (yes they do.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2zwUiFvzgs
>then through the sunned gathering
sun as a verb is to be given contact with the sun, suggesting an outdoor area, or artificially 'sunned' by heat lamps
>of her marjoram
herb
>and sweet basil
herb
>from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American,
reading book reviews in scientific american, making note of oedipa's very standard suburban housewife-ish life. scientific american, a very superficial window to literature no?
>into the layering of a lasagna,
housewifish chores, making lasagna, a pasta dish in layers
>garlicking of a bread,
inventing verbs, garlicking the bread, making garlic bread, generally toasted bread with garlic butter
>tearing up of romaine leaves,
romaine lettuce generally used in salad, herb speckled lasagna and salad for dinner
>eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight's whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband,
the twilight's whiskey sours, establishing a time with a drink, a routine, more banal housewifish chores, also introduces her husband as a man of habit. he likes his whiskey every twilight.
>Wendell ("Mucho") Maas
mucho maaas, 'much more'
>from work, she wondered,
wondering still about what had happened a year from 'today' that would have pierce write her up as executor of the will
>wondered, shuffling back through a fat deckful of days
nice visual poetry of ordering memories, looking back through a scattered deck of dates
>which seemed (wouldn't she be first to admit it?) more or less identical,
the days were the same
>or all pointing the same way subtly like a conjurer's deck, any odd one readily clear to a trained eye.
the significance lying in no individual day of the lot, but readable in any one of them
>It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley
chet huntley and david brinkley, NBC reporters running from the mid fifties to late 60s
>to remember that last year at three or so one morning there had come this long-distance call,
from pierce
>from where she would never know (unless now he'd left a diary) by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic tones
an impression, slavic accent, pierce playing games
>as second secretary at the Transyl-vanian Consulate, looking for an escaped bat;
pierce's jokes, an escaped bat from transylvania: dracula
>modulated to comic-Negro,
voices
>then on into hostile Pachuco
paucho, mexican american
>dialect, full of chingas
"fucks"
>and maricones;
"faggots"
>then a Gestapo officer asking her in shrieks did she have relatives in Germany
nazi secret service. the range of voices, the jokes, the absurdity of the call to an ex girlfriend at 3am introduces pierce as a much more unstable character than we'd previously been lead to believe. gives the impression of a nutcase who has almost fallen into his fortune

>> No.7121549

there's two pages. hope i helped.

>> No.7121560

>>7121549
Not OP, but that was nice. Thanks.

>> No.7121562

>>7121285
For you, consider it a boulder. Once you get it rolling, it will continue rolling until it destroys the Franciscan abbey, much loved by the surrounding hamlet, and you are subjected to the breaking-wheel

>> No.7121566

>>7121285
No, anon you are not too dumb.
There, you happy now?

>> No.7121577

>>7121546
legitimately impressed that you cared enough about OP to offer up this much time for nothing

>> No.7121593 [DELETED] 

>>7121577
any excuse to talk about the literature I love to an open set of ears! enjoyed rereading those pages, too.

>> No.7121638

>>7121549
Thanks a lot. It's a different style I think I can get used to. Did you have look up all that info (people, places, etc.) by yourself, or did you use a guide or something?

>> No.7121654

>>7121638
some of it is kind of common sense-ish, some of it was looked up and annotated into my copy long ago.

>> No.7121751

>>7121432
>>7121467
>>7121511
Could you do this for the whole book Anon? It's very insightful.

I cannot pay in cash but we can watch movies together and give you imitation crab meat. It's not bad! I just have too much

>> No.7121755

>>7121751
>can't read Pynchon
>has a surplus of weeb food
This checks out.

>> No.7121797

>>7121751
>Could you do this for the whole book Anon? It's very insightful.

I do in a sense. It's called annotating. Okay I don't go as overboard as I did there, but my books are usually marked up like crazy with inferences and research notes in the margins. You should try it!

>> No.7122283

>>7121424
but it is, it demonstrates Oedipa is insane

>> No.7122323

>>7121285
If you can't understand the first two pages of TCOL49, I'm doubtful that you could understand anything else by Pynchon. Just read his stupid, ugly cousin: Kurt Vonnegut.

>> No.7122404

>>7122323
Slaughterhouse five is a far better work than anything Pynchon has put out.

>> No.7122407

>>7122404
>Slaughterhouse five is a far better work than anything Pynchon has put out
Such obvious bait.

>> No.7122417

>>7122407
You are part of the his cult, I see. I bet you suck up Bloom's tit and think James Joyce is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.

>> No.7122559

>>7122417
Now you're just making me cringe

>> No.7122899

>>7122283

>"Oedipa Maas" pronounced out loud becomes "head up my ass"

>> No.7123044

>>7122899
oh my god

>> No.7123058

>>7122899
Hahah that pynchon and his zany pomo humor! Haha!

Nigga blows

>> No.7123100

>>7121797
Post pic of a page

>> No.7123209

>>7121285
Just go with the flow. Don't try to make sense of it, and it will come together.

>> No.7123319

>>7121432
>>a California real estate mogul
>pierce
dunno why but i lost it

>> No.7123336

[sploiler] yes [/sploiler]

>> No.7123355

>>7121511
>pynchonian world building, or information overloading. no matter how insignificant it is, if it can be named it probably will be. creates a 'maximalist' effect. a sea of information to root around in, never knowing which will come back and be important or which will never be mentioned again. an interesting asethetic no doubt, especially in the context of paranoid postmodernist detective stories.
key info

>> No.7123589

>>7122899
It's pronounced like "moz" not "mass"

>> No.7124420

>>7121504
What does Evangelion have to do with Gravity's Rainbow.

>> No.7124453

>>7121577
OP is not the only one reading the thread, my nigga.

>> No.7124499

>>7121797
Pic please and make this thread interesting.

>> No.7124512

>>7123589
the name is intentionally loaded with potential interpretations, so any reading is as valid as another

>> No.7124534

>>7124420
>not knowing that Slothorp is Gendo Akari before second impact

>> No.7124542

OP, when I first read the book I thought it was crushingly dull and overwritten and when I realised that the plot was the possibility of a postal service existing, I just wondered what the point was. I kept thinking: "what's with all the digressions? why is he talking about a fucking play for 20 pages? why is nothing happening?"

After about 9 months I went to read it for a second time just to give it another chance and really really loved it. I was more engrossed in its atmosphere than almost any other novel.

I'm not a 100 % convert though. TCOL49 is focused. I've liked his other books for other reasons but I have currently written off Gravity's Rainbow as a nonsensical dumping ground and Against the Day as wikipedia fanfiction.

>> No.7124589

>>7121314
>I'd love to see you try reading Finnegans Wake with that mentality.
Don't be insipid. We're talking about TCoL49 here.

>> No.7124763

>>7121314
finnegans wake is in english in a very loose sense

>> No.7124778

>>7124542
gravitys rainbow is his best novel though. its laden with deep feel

>> No.7124799
File: 1.17 MB, 1680x1050, neon_genesis_evangelion_asuka_langley_soryu-wallpaper-hd-wide.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7124799

>>7124420
They have a lot to do with one another, actually. I find it hard to believe that someone could be familiar with both and not see a connection. I'm actually writing a book about this.

>>7124534
P sure Blicero is Gendo fam.

>> No.7124835

>>7124453
You are onto something...

>> No.7125307

>>7121285
Hey anon, same thing happened to me when I first read CoL49. Read the first 2 pages 3 times or so, and then just read the book. It doesn't matter if you don't get it the first 2/3 times, once you pass those fist pages it'll begin making sense. Good luck

>> No.7125338

wasn't it just explaining Oedipa becoming some Stewart of a property that was going to be auctioned off or something?

>> No.7125345

>>7121504
uhh. is this post serious? I didn't have that hard of a time with col49, how bad is GR?

>> No.7125351
File: 70 KB, 1024x427, 7dRcWyB.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7125351

>>7122417
what are you on about

>> No.7125727
File: 418 KB, 747x1417, 1365475090228.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7125727

Before reading the meme trilogy, I would recommend the following:

1) Read the /lit/ starter pack.

2) Start with the Greeks.

3) Read the following sampling of the Canon:

The Divine Comedy
Canterbury Tales
Don Quixote
King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Paradise Lost
Faust
Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment
Moby Dick

Then you will be ready to appreciate what Joyce, Pynchon, and to a lesser extent, DFW have done with the medium.

>> No.7125744

The more I learn about Pynchon the more I'm certain his books are just one big sokal affair-esque vacuum for the praise from 'intellectuals'

I wonder if he'll ever pull the plug or let literary students do it decades in the future

>> No.7125748

>>7125727
if you don't have any lyric poetry in your sampling of the canon you should be trashed

>> No.7125749

>>7121546
I remember reading somewhere that the voices peirce makes on the phone correspond to the names of the lawyers mentioned in the will.

>> No.7125775

>>7121285
Pro tip

Oedipa's nickname is Oed, Oed stands for Oxford English Dictionary

t. jackson

>> No.7125784

>>7125775
give the computer back to your dad Jackson

>> No.7125802

>>7125784
He won't come over here, but he wanted me to tell you how good Warlock is.

>> No.7125816

>>7125802
Dude you really need a public profile pic on your Facebook. For reasons.

>>7125345
Haha got another one.

>> No.7125834

>>7125748
what should i add?

>> No.7125853

>>7122323
tbh the first few pages of tcol49 are the hardest, the cadence takes a bit of getting used to

>> No.7126046

>>7124799
I'm not. I'm going to get GR right now. I have seen Evangelion and liked it a lot.

>> No.7126231

>>7121797
Post pic of page please

>> No.7126243

>>7125727
shit meme tbh

>> No.7126549

>>7125834
probably keats's odes

>> No.7126775

>>7125744

If you were talking about Finnegan's Wake I'd agree, but Pynchon isn't that bad.

>> No.7126907

im reading gravitys rainbow after having read cry of lot 49 and im finding it considerably denser (specially on the historical side, also all those characters, where on cry we only have a protagonist to follow for 200 pages)