No memes, no ebin irony, this novel is amazing. I love Pynchon's authorial voice and surrealist plot structure. What should I read next from him? Or is this it?

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Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:20:35 2015 No.7127186 [Reply] [Original]

No memes, no ebin irony, this novel is amazing. I love Pynchon's authorial voice and surrealist plot structure. What should I read next from him? Or is this it?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:23:03 2015 No.7127194 if its the surrealism you love Mason & Dixon is what you want next, if you're just more interested in his works in general read them all in any order you want

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:27:19 2015 No.7127210 >>7127194 Are any of them bland or disappointing? In your opinion, of course.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:34:04 2015 No.7127238 read infinite jest, its even better

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:37:41 2015 No.7127247 >>7127210 people say avoid vineland, otherwise he is well received

>>	The cats Thu Sep 17 13:39:06 2015 No.7127253 >>7127247 Vineland is fine. Stop parroting DFW, you don't even like him.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:40:48 2015 No.7127261 Surreal =/= surrealism

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:43:47 2015 No.7127274 >>7127210 You might find Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge disappointing because they're "Pynchon-lite". Still fun reads though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:46:51 2015 No.7127282 >>7127253 Yeha remember when vineland came out in 1990 and all the critics trashed it for being a bad book. They did that because they parroting dfw, who was detoxxing from heroin or sometbing in a halfway house at time

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:50:39 2015 No.7127307 >>7127238 I have no reason to believe this but David Foster Wallace seems to be more of an academic. There's nothing wrong with this, it's just not what I'm looking for. I will read infinite jest eventually, though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:52:19 2015 No.7127315 >>7127261 That's funny because you are wrong.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 13:58:09 2015 No.7127340

>>7127307
Actually, it's the opposite. DFW is a far more relatable and humane author than Pynchon. There's a lot of high-wire theoretico-literary stuff going on behind the scenes because the guy was one of the best minds to ever live, how could he resist. But Wallace designed the book so that if you dont want to concern yourself with that, you dont have to. You can just talk to Wallace, get to know him, chat, light up a blunt if you want. Its casual. but if you want to dive deeper into the most mindblowing structuro-technical feats in literature, you can do that too. Just depends on what youre into. Infinite Jest can definitely be read as just a chill read. And its about human subjects like people and happiness. Yono the things literature used to be about before the academic pomo interlude (pynchon etc)

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:04:53 2015 No.7127368 >>7127340 Although, I'm sure there's truth in what you're saying, I find Pynchon very relatable. While reading Gravity's Rainbow, I get the sense that he doesn't take himself too seriously and that's immensely agreeable with me.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:06:06 2015 No.7127373 Yes it's brilliant. One of the best experiences I ever had was reading it for the second time.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:09:58 2015 No.7127385

>>7127340
Have you read Pale King? I've just started it recently and have been really enjoying it. Now there's a 'conversation' with Wallace. Surprisingly enjoyable and insightful read. It hardly feels like a fiction book.

Only parts I don't like are the author interjections, that talk about not being cute meta-humor but then actually are. Kind of childish. I actually feel like he wouldn't have included them, at least in that form, if he were alive to oversee PK's publishing.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:10:47 2015 No.7127389

>>7127307
wayyy off. Pynchon is the academic writer. Read "E Unibis Pluram," it's a herald of sorts for Infinite Jest. Wallace was fascinated by Pynchon and Barth in college, but eventually (partly through interactions with Jonathan Franzen and Mary Karr) he decided that there was more to be done in literature than the brainy, abstract, academic gameplaying that the postmodernists did. But on the other hand he didnt completely believe in capital-R realism either, whose comprehensibility and neatness struck him as false and not reflective of the fragmented nature of the life we live today. His solution was to combine them: wed postmodern formal techniques to content humanely concerned with story and character and real emotion. Infinite Jest is therefore both a novel about math and politics (like gravitys rainbow) as well as a novel that has believable characters (rather than pynchons cartoons), emotion (rather than pynchons irony and nihilism and apocalyptic glee), and a plot thats not just knocking you around. To combine Wallaces cold analytic mind with his giant heart was his great insight, and its why Infinite Jest is the best book of the 20th century as well as a brutal rebuttal to the old postmodern "masters".

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:13:38 2015 No.7127400 >>7127389 >>7127340 Pynchon writes about academic issues like he's your best friend. Wallace is your best friend, but writes about very human issues somewhat academically.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:17:42 2015 No.7127413

>all this DFW dick-riding

Jesus Christ, guys. He was very clever, and he had this reputation for being humane, but I don't think it's actually deserved. IJ is basically just a giant fucking joke at the reader's expense, and he can be remarkably cruel to both characters and real persons. He planned on killing someone--ending another person's world and destroying many others in the process--over a woman, for fuck's sake. He was not fucking saint. He was a smart sad sack.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:37:44 2015 No.7127505

>>7127238
Infinite Jest seems very childish in comparison to Gravitys Rainbow. DFW was so envious of Pynchon's talent that he refused to talk about him which makes me think he didn't even have an understanding of his works and didn't wana embarrass himself during interviews.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:42:08 2015 No.7127527

>>7127400
Thats a nice symmetrical remark, but its not true. Wallace's fiction has a brain as well as a beating heart. The only thing beating in Gravity's Rainbow (which is a good book) is Pynchon's brain. C'mon, its a war book thats really about world systems and math. Name a deep, human character in Gravity's Rainbow, and I'll cede the argument. His characters are cardboard people with joke names.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:43:44 2015 No.7127538 >>7127186 I rash on pynchonposting all the time. I hate this bucktoothed faggot memelord. I wish I could read someone with his admittedly sublime writing ability with none of the zany pomo and drug fueled passages on shit eating.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:44:52 2015 No.7127541

>>7127307
Both TRP and DFW have cultivated (if only by default for the first) a down-to-earth, non-academic image while reaping the benefits of their involvement in academia, but of the two DFW is indeed the one who is the most insistent on displaying his wide-ranging dilettante knowledge under academic-level appearances. Thankfully, as some fanboi has already pointed out earlier, the true nature of his erudition and intent keep his brush strokes into these topics entirely apart from what is worth engaging with in the novel, and I suspect you will enjoy reading it all the more if you either buy into his persona or consider the flourishes as impressionistic.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:45:34 2015 No.7127545 >>7127527 The interactions between Enzian and his brother (thetchizereree whatever the fuck russian dude) as well as Jessica and Rogers interactions were more emotional than anything out of IJ. DFW's writing seems hormonal compared to Pynchon.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:45:53 2015 No.7127547

>>7127186
After GR, I personally had a break from Pynchon and now I'm getting back into his work via Pynchon-lite because GR was such a frustrating (yet rewarding) read. I loved it but I certainly would need to revisit it in a few years time with some notes or an annotated copy. How far into the book are you, OP, or have you finished it already?

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:46:17 2015 No.7127548

>>7127505
Actually he talked about Pynchon all the time. He talks about him in the Larry McCaffery interview, just off the top of my head. He also did an Infinite Jest interview in which he said he thought Vineland was a poor book and Pynchon old-fashioned and out of touch. He said Gravity's Rainbow was a "great book" in that interview, but in another he called it "pop avant-garde," which isnt untrue. So even thougj I'm on my phone and I dont have links I was able to recall three interviews in which Wallace talks about Pynchon. The assertion is simply false. He didnt envy Pynchon a word.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:46:55 2015 No.7127552 >>7127538 Although a lot of his works are "druggy", he doesn't always write ultra-lewd sex or shit eating, anon.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:49:59 2015 No.7127562

>>7127413
>>all this DFW dick-riding

It got a huge bump after the IJ readalong when DFWs ideas were discussed a lot. I imagine a similar thing will happen after the GR readalong, but I'm afraid most people don't want to disappoint the ghost of DFW because it's not as popular.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:50:30 2015 No.7127564

>>7127545
I disagree, i found those parts of GR lacking in real emotion. I felt like I was constantly being told by Pynchons ironic smile not to take any of it seriously or emotionally lest I be thought a fool. Hes a sardonic writer even when hes trying to write emotional scenes. He cant resist undercutting the emotional impact his scenes would otherwise have, and until m&d he couldnt bring himself to write a character. Im sorry but ive read all of pynchon and im afraid there are many hearty/guilty laughs to be had from his work but no emotion at all. For that i turn to wallace.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:50:54 2015 No.7127567

>>7127186
>>7127186
literally the most overrated book of the last 100 years
it's absolutely fucking awful
"let me write a book and just make it as hard to read and unaccessible as possible"
"look im going to kind of say something about racism and other 'subtle' shit ;^) but im secretly just pussy footing around actually saying anything about anything oh and I really miss that one girl in college who actually let me bang her"
pynchon is so overrated it hurts
everyone just likes this dumb shit because it makes them feel smart, go have a wank

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:56:23 2015 No.7127582 >>7127567 THANK YOU Its babby's first meme book. Wow this must be deep, so this is what real literature people are always talking about is! Look ma im reading! 500 pages f impenetrable tongue in cheek 'irony' is fucking mind numbing. It's soulless

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 14:58:10 2015 No.7127586 why does no one talk about the fact that, while pynchon can write up a storm... hes a god damn hippy. i guess you can just divorce prose from meaning, but idk... in the end to me hes just a hippy who can write. doesnt make his worldview not retarded.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:00:51 2015 No.7127593 >>7127582 Next thing you'll be telling me that Ulysses is a waste of time, pffft.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:05:46 2015 No.7127614

I thought V. was more difficult, although it was my first experience with Pynchon.

For me Gravity's Rainbow was easy to read. Not easy in the sense that the work itself isn't difficult, I did have to re-read some parts, but that I was caught in its flow and truly enjoyed following the weird journey of the characters. One of the few books that, when I finished it, I felt like reading it again.

Going to read Mason & Dixon after I finish the current book I'm on, which I'm excited for as I've heard some people say it's their favourite Pynchon work.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:24:46 2015 No.7127675 File: 876 KB, 1222x3649, SeALidZ.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:27:45 2015 No.7127691 >>7127340 This is the gayest thing I've ever read

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:29:15 2015 No.7127696
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>>7127586
I'd say the moonbat tendencies come out the worst in Bleeding Edge. It's basically just "the government is bad, Jews didn't do 9/11 and boy do I feel bad for being a WASP please fuck my face, Jews and brown people." It's a fun book if you can ignore that but the self-loating was way too out front.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:31:09 2015 No.7127700 >>7127527 >What are stars but points in the body of god in which we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing? >Gravity's Rainbow >world systems and math There's like 1 equation in the book

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:33:57 2015 No.7127711 >>7127567 >>7127582 Honestly, leave.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:34:19 2015 No.7127713 >>7127700 Humanitards saying "math" often mean "physics" and any related metaphors

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:35:23 2015 No.7127715 >>7127713 >metaphors do you mean hard sciences? >>7127711 no

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:42:27 2015 No.7127738 >>7127711 Shut up faggot this isn't a hugbox. Ive probably read more books this year than you've read in your life.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:42:31 2015 No.7127739

>>7127527
I'm just reading through it for the first time now (have about a 100 pages left to go), but what really struck me about the novel most is how the story and character interactions can so quickly shift from frivolous and whole-heartedly funny (in a grim and satirical way, of course) to some of the more introspective and latently emotional writing I've come across. Pynchon writes very cinematically, and he impresses both thought and feeling into the text by doing this. There's definitely heart to his cartoons and story, but its easy to miss it if all your looking at are the surface details and 'underlying' thematic/intellectual bites of prose; in other words, its through the lack of description of characters beyond internal generalizations and snoddy-sentiment at points that he's able to evoke the larger sense of palpability to the bizarre world he's constructing, an web of interconnected vignettes which act ultimately as the driving force of the story.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 15:47:07 2015 No.7127753 >>7127739 gay

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 16:07:51 2015 No.7127826 Gravity's Rainbow is concentrated garbage.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:07:02 2015 No.7128040 >>7127567 >I don't understand the intellectual or aesthetic merits of a piece of literature >Therefore it's literal garbage No u

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:14:50 2015 No.7128072

>>7127567
>>7127582
>>7127826
>I don't understand it; therefore no one does and the whole of academia is wrong and pretentious.
You people are the worst kind of people. Never has your kind ever given any argument against the books greatness other than ",hurr it doesn't make sense," which is factually wrong.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:20:31 2015 No.7128096 >>7128072 Yeah dude everyone who disagrees about your gay meme book worships John green. Go back to pretending you're cultured cause you uninstalled wow and read the one book all the cool kids are talking about

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:20:51 2015 No.7128099 >>7128072 It's /b/ the book (edgy, random) with muh paranoia on every page to be relatable to introverts like you. Also, excessive environmental descriptions and vague stream-of-consciousness to give it "literary merit." Concentrated garbage.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:25:16 2015 No.7128122 >>7128099 There's nothing 'random' about it, you idiot. Everything is carefully orchestrated to produce an effect in the reader. Maximalism is part of this end, not some flourish without purpose.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:26:40 2015 No.7128129 >>7128096 God damn, it's like you can't even think without the assistance of memes

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:27:41 2015 No.7128131 File: 13 KB, 184x184, what.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7127413 > He planned on killing someone--ending another person's world and destroying many others in the process--over a woman, for fuck's sake hm?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:28:48 2015 No.7128138 >>7128131 Google it, friend. It's a well known anecdote.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:29:51 2015 No.7128146 >>7128122 He wrote whole sections of the book drugged out in a hotel room you fucking mong

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:31:50 2015 No.7128156

>>7128072
Haha he's talking about shit eating but it's supposed to be a deep literature book XDD hahah his erections predict V2 strikes. Crude, unconventional, and humorous! I dont know what the fucks going on and i cant even begin to tell you anything substantive about the themes but hey the cool kids said it was good. Maybe this literature stuff isnt so bad after all! Wicked XD

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:34:28 2015 No.7128167

>>7128146

> write blitzed out on mescaline, edit while falling through a k-hole

Doesn't change a thing. Have you ever taken 'hard' drugs? They're not actually debilitating if you have some idea what you're doing. Three quarters of the world's library was written high as fuck.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:37:19 2015 No.7128182 >>7128167 actually whenever you take too much drugs you take a double ended dildo in your anus. i saw it in a movie.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:39:33 2015 No.7128195 >>7128156 it's like you think what you're typing will make people cringe, and that now is really making people cringe

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:40:01 2015 No.7128200 >>7128138 need proof now so i can feel better about myself.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:41:49 2015 No.7128209 >>7128195 what

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:44:13 2015 No.7128223

>>7128182
what's more likely here faggot?

>takes LSD, writes hyper-complex work practically dripping with esoteric meaning
>takes LSD, writes tryhard surrealist pomo shit nerds think will make them look smart on the subway for generations to come

your meme book sucks

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:50:41 2015 No.7128252 >>7128223 how about >you misread a book that is acclaimed by people who read for a living >you correctly read a book that was misread by people who read for a living your meme suck

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 17:54:13 2015 No.7128263 Ey yo look everybody! It's Tommy Pine slippin' on a banana peel. Ayyy.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:04:52 2015 No.7128320 >>7128252 Just because something is written spectacularly doesn't make it enjoyable to read. You'd have to be a retard to say Pynchon's a bad writer, but technical skill can't make up emotion and incoherence. Keep fighting the good fight though.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:08:44 2015 No.7128337

>>7128146
Because he told you that, right?

It was inspired by drugs, probably drug use. It is not the product of drugs. It's a very intelligently structured dark comedy reflecting on war, death, and the systems that create war and death. It's trippy and fractured. So is T.S. Eliot.

Drugs don't write political critique, drugs don't write comic surrealism, drugs don't write coded poetry.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:11:04 2015 No.7128343 Still waiting for this board to graduate from pynchon and wallace and start reading gaddis and mcelroy. Do the old 17 year olds leave and then we just get a new batch or what?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:14:40 2015 No.7128355 Its like dude we get it theres poop and weed in this novel & bloom says its ok to like it. Yep infinite jest wraps around to the beginning, pretty nifty. Yep a circle, annular, infinite. Now calm down and buy the recognitions.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:16:55 2015 No.7128367 >>7128343 I think they're just the authors the kind of people who want to discuss books on 4chan gravitate towards. lonely, bored, self hating people. dfw writes about them pynchon in his sensory overload allows them to escape

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:27:30 2015 No.7128413 >>7128337 Boy have I got news for you.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:28:24 2015 No.7128416 >drugs dont write political critique >drugs dont write comic surrealism >drugs dont write coded poetry are you high?

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:32:24 2015 No.7128436

lol yea the really valuable political critique offered by a literal hippie. i'll give you his imagination and his prose. these elements can seduce you into taking gravity's rainbow "political critique" if you want to call it, seriously, but you have to realize that he's propagating for a stupid and drug-inspired worldview. gorgeously. beautifully. but still. in the end.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:43:55 2015 No.7128487 File: 25 KB, 269x400, 1442529835587.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7127413 >a giant fucking joke at the reader's expense We're talking about this guy now, right?

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:44:36 2015 No.7128491

>>7128436
What world view is that, that he's propagating for?

He's breaking down the absurdity of war, mass killings, atomic bomb droppings, drafts, Vietnam, born out of systems where noone involved really has personal stakes in it, the product of a military industrial system that demands conflict to balance out the equation of production. The absurdity of a war in which targets are so random they are misattributed to a man's sexual adventures. Like some great death machine we've all loaded ourselves into and don't know how to stop.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:45:32 2015 No.7128493 >>7128491 >memeing this hard

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:47:07 2015 No.7128500 >>7127548 >Gravity's Rainbow >"pop avant-garde" Now, this actually triggered me.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:47:21 2015 No.7128501 >>7128491 >he's breaking down [long list] No he's not. He references those things passingly. Mostly the book is comprised of comparisons of rockets to penises, drug-addled paranoia, and wacky random edgy humor.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:48:09 2015 No.7128503 >>7128491 do you know what a hippie is?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:49:46 2015 No.7128511 >>7128501 its like looking at people who will stand there and try to decipher the meaning of a red circle, when the only true reality of it is that modern artists are lazy con men.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:50:49 2015 No.7128515 >>7128511 let's not go crazy. plenty of modern art is legitimate. pynchon is totally legitimate, aesthetically. ideologically, he's a god damn potsmoking retard and if you dont realize this, its only a testament to his incredible writing.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:53:00 2015 No.7128533

>>7128501
>he didn't understand it
>instead of trying again or just moving on to different works he's shitposting on /lit/
Anyone have any other forums that would be good for discussing literature? It just feels like everyone on here is either from /pol/ or Reddit, and idk I'd just like to read a critique of a book that doesn't just boil down to wildly paranoid ideological ramblings that are pretty implicit in the narrow worldviews of both the liberal and reactionary sites I've just named.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:54:03 2015 No.7128539
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>>7127675
>tfw I randomly got myself a Vintage edition without even knowing there were misprint versions of GR
I got it from an online secondhand book site for a ridiculously low price and it's in perfect shape too.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:54:08 2015 No.7128540 >>7128533 >waahhh why isn't this obviously wacky random tryhard book as deep as I think it is

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:55:20 2015 No.7128544 >>7128533 >t just feels like everyone on here is either from /pol/ or Reddit Humanity in general si retarded. You can run, but you can't hide, anon.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:56:32 2015 No.7128546 >>7128540 >deep Even if it's not deep you must admit it is definitely a great book. For several reasons I shouldn't even mention.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 18:56:35 2015 No.7128547

>>7128501
>No he's not. He references those things passingly. Mostly the book is comprised of comparisons of rockets to penises, drug-addled paranoia, and wacky random edgy humor.

>He references those things passingly.
He does not engage these subjects in a direct and didactic style, because that's bad, boring, writing. This is fiction. I'm confused by what you want. It is not a philosophical or political writing. It IS fiction, it IS above all poetry, an aesthetic experience. The main plotlines are all built around this criticism of war as driven by systems economic and scientific. That the technology precedes the reason for war, war being the justification for the technology in the first place. A reversal of cause and effect, probably the main reoccurring motif. So yes, he comes at these themes indirectly, but they're very core to the book.
>Mostly the book is comprised of comparisons of rockets to penises,
And this is directly related to the cold, unthinking process of war. It is driven by urges beyond human rationale.
>drug-addled paranoia, and wacky random edgy humor.
It is I would say, at it's core, a satirical picaresque adventure book. How is any of this inappropriate to the subject matter? I would correct though, that the paranoia is very seldom actually drug induced, and more based on the paranoia of war, the paranoia of living in a world with guided missiles where death seems more random than ever, the paranoia of our main character Slothrop being under constant surveillance by multiple government figures who begin to blur together and look like one. The paranoia of fighting in a war where both sides are being funded by the same corporations. It's a paranoia of seeing your values fall apart in front of you. The paranoia of unknowing.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:00:16 2015 No.7128565 File: 225 KB, 480x320, 1394513570222.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7128547 >actual good posts >on /lit/

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:01:57 2015 No.7128576

to put it another way, pynchon's sheer talent allows him to conjure gorgeously and persuasively and in epic form a vision of the world that one can appreciate aesthetically, but is in fact simple-minded hippie bullshit. plenty of brilliant writers offer powerfully drawn visions of the world that we wouldnt agree with. religious writers, fascist writers. we can appreciate these writers aesthetically even when we can evaluate their worldview as wrongheaded. pynchon is the exquisite epic poet of hippiedom.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:05:10 2015 No.7128590

if you're an actual hippie... which would mean pynchons political attitudes and notions about the world are to you self-evidently correct...(or maybe pynchon persuaded you)... then what can you say, gravity's rainbow is your holy text, and what can is say that will dissuade you.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:06:48 2015 No.7128596 i also dont like the proliferation of gravitys rainbow fanboys insisting people who have anything less than rapturous to say about it, simply didnt "get" it. maybe this is just an easy way to troll, but its pretty irksome.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:07:11 2015 No.7128599 >>7128547 Hated the book but I have to admit that this is a great interpretation. Quality post, anon.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:07:51 2015 No.7128602 consider that the person "got" it just fine, didn't "buy" it. sidenote everything i said about pynchon applies to don delillo as well.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:10:07 2015 No.7128610
File: 518 KB, 640x480, Dr._Strangelove_-_Riding_the_Bomb.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>7128590
what is there to disagree with? I guess if you think war and murder are positives there'd be that to disagree with, but its not like he's pushing some utopian alternative that would never work. gr is a cackling celebration of just how fucked up things have gotten here at the end. an anti war protest from the point of a falling nuclear bomb

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:13:24 2015 No.7128620 >>7128610 lol, even i wouldnt reduce pynchons critique to "war and murder are bad". what a low opinion you have of this book!

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:30:54 2015 No.7128672

>>7128599
>It is driven by urges beyond human rationale.

Now that I think about it this seems like a cop out excuse made by Pynchon fanboys to justify every shit-eating scene and child molestation and orgy scene and wacky Rocketman running around doing zany things scene, etc.

>50 Shades of Grey is directly related to the cold, unthinking process of female sexuality. It is driven by urges beyond human rationale.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:32:03 2015 No.7128676 >>7128672 Meant to quote >>7128547

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:33:31 2015 No.7128679 >>7128672 >>7128620 lmao btfo

>>	The cats Thu Sep 17 19:35:52 2015 No.7128687 >>7127282 That's because it was the first thing he wrote in 20 years and it followed gravity's rainbow. It's pretty much Inherent Vice in a different setting.

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:43:01 2015 No.7128713

I've given Gravity's Rainbow to my mother who has read Don Quixote in the original language despite Spanish not being her mother tongue, if that says anything about her to read, telling her over and over how it's amazing an work of literature, despite never having read it myself.

How fucked am I?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:46:21 2015 No.7128723 >>7127186 Do I need to read Ulysses before this or Infinite Jest?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:47:24 2015 No.7128727 >>7128713 >trying to meme your own mother a shameful nigga

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:48:11 2015 No.7128728 >>7128713 Shit-swallowing, pedophilia, sadomasochism with young boys. Why would you rec a book you've never read?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:51:03 2015 No.7128739 >>7128727 >>7128728 Well, I was planning to read it over the winter break, but I already picked up a copy and she asked me if I could recommend anything, so I figured i'd give this to her, and discuss it once I was done reading it myself.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:51:57 2015 No.7128741 >>7127675 whats with all the Vineland hate. when compared to GR it isn't much sure but its still a great book.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:55:02 2015 No.7128750 Modern Post-Modern New Sincerity Probably in the order of release

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 19:57:03 2015 No.7128756 >>7128713 top jokes. she is going to want to have a talk with you sometime soon.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 20:29:52 2015 No.7128863 >>7128713 uh-oh

Anonymous Thu Sep 17 21:00:26 2015 No.7128984

>>7128672
You're trying to lump too much under that umbrella. There is no doubt a comic element to the book. Why does anyone have to rationalize Rocketman's zany sex antics? Why do you act like every element of the book has to be answered for?

All I was addressing was the rocket/phallic comparisons, this repeated use of the hardon as a symbol for priming and launch, as if the V-2 firings are borne out of some sort of erectile instinct in the system. Beyond human understandings of cause and effect. This is very much what drives Pointsman insane. He is a man of the old world like Brigadier pudding, and looks for logical evidence for the V-2 landings (comically in Slothrop's sexual encounters) because he can not come to grips with the nature of modern war, which is necessarily incompatible with old understandings of war.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 21:06:34 2015 No.7128996 >>7128750 No, it goes Modern, Post Modernism, Post Ironic, New Sincerety, and then now we're in Post Sincerety.

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 21:08:46 2015 No.7129002 >>7128687 Are you kidding? Vineland is fucked. It feels like an incomplete novel pulled out of storage and hastily finished up without any regard for how the finished product reads. Brock Vond suddenly x'd out of the plot by ... budget cuts?

>>	Anonymous Thu Sep 17 21:10:10 2015 No.7129008 >>7128996 >>7128750 "It" "goes" Premodernism Modernism

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 07:50:00 2015 No.7130406 Why is Evangelion compared to this book so often?

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 07:55:19 2015 No.7130423 >>7130406 there's a lot of fanbase overlap

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 07:57:33 2015 No.7130428 [DELETED]

I haven't read Thomas Pynchon, but I heard he's akin to my favorite writers, Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, who were very influenced by him.

>LM: Has Thomas Pynchon had an influence on your work?

WG: Pynchon has been a favorite writer and a major influence all along. In many ways I see him as almost the start of a certain mutant pop culture imagery with esoteric historical and scientific information. Pynchon is a kind of mythic hero of mine, and I suspect that if you talk with a lot of recent SF writers you'll find they've all read Gravity's Rainbow (1973) several times and have been very much influenced by it. I was into Pynchon early on- I remember seeing a New York Times review of V. when it first came out- I was just a kid- and thinking, Boy, that sounds like some really weird shit!

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:01:02 2015 No.7130436 >>7130423 ...Seriously? I don't think they have shit to do with each other.

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:01:57 2015 No.7130438

I haven't read Thomas Pynchon, but I heard he's akin to my favorite writers, Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, who were very influenced by him.

>LM: Has Thomas Pynchon had an influence on your work?

>WG: Pynchon has been a favorite writer and a major influence all along. In many ways I see him as almost the start of a certain mutant pop culture imagery with esoteric historical and scientific information. Pynchon is a kind of mythic hero of mine, and I suspect that if you talk with a lot of recent SF writers you'll find they've all read Gravity's Rainbow (1973) several times and have been very much influenced by it. I was into Pynchon early on- I remember seeing a New York Times review of V. when it first came out- I was just a kid- and thinking, Boy, that sounds like some really weird shit!

Gravity's Rainbow is a big deal for science-fiction fans.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:02:10 2015 No.7130439 >>7130406 Because they're both "confusing" and people like to call them both meaningless nonsense when they're actually rather easily interpretable.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:02:43 2015 No.7130442 File: 161 KB, 460x283, 1346957472440.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7128996 I hope the next step is Extinction.

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:10:05 2015 No.7130457

pynchon is showing you that war is senseless by making things happen that dont make any sense. when weird stuff happens, thats because war's weird. its scary and confusing. the corporations are making the war happen. thats not the way its supposed to be. and people arent supposed to eat shit either. so it all comes together thematically you see.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:12:18 2015 No.7130464 >>7128713 You had better confess you haven't read it. It's a good book but it's not something shared between family members.

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:15:51 2015 No.7130470

if the book is hard to understand, thats pynchon showing you that war is sometimes hard to understand. when the man goes down the toilet, and you're thinking "what the heck?" that's because a lot of people in the war wer e thinking "what the heck" as well, about the war, and were in a metaphorical toilet. it's a messed up book, but hey, war is messed up. it's hell, they say.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:17:47 2015 No.7130473 if youre reading gravitys rainbow and it sounds like a bunch of nonsense and none of it makes any sense to you... well, the military-industrial complex doesnt make a whole lot of sense either, does it? think about that

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:20:14 2015 No.7130477 "war is senseless".... "book doesnt make any sense" are you starting to get it??

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:28:36 2015 No.7130496 >>7130470 >>7130473 >>7130477 good lad I always thought that toilet scene was a stream-of-conscience of being drunk - atleast that's how I think I think when I'm hurling into a toilet boil, thoughts all disjointed and flaring and fevered etc

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 08:30:07 2015 No.7130502 >>7130496 ironically im drunk and will think of writing this with irony when im probably vomiting into a toilet '''''boil'''''' tomorrow morning goodnight all!

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:10:37 2015 No.7131309

>>7127505
>>7127548

Wallace stated pretty clearly at one point (though I don't remember which interview) that Broom of the System was essentially a direct response to Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. That shouldn't really surprise anyone who's read both books; it's most obvious in the names: that's the only book where Wallace gives many zany Pynchon names and he does it for pretty much every character. Wallace of course grew to find his own book really childish and immature, though, and aside from the reasons he gives I think the clear Pynchon immitation must have been part of it.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:13:28 2015 No.7131318 >>7131309 >Wallace stated pretty clearly at one point (though I don't remember which interview) twasn't him

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:13:58 2015 No.7131320

>>7127545

The little parts with Jessica and Roger Mexico were extremely frustrating to me because they were so emotional. I've said this before on this board but I hated seeing how much Pynchon could make me feel and then how seldom he actually did it. Like he could write stuff that hit on all levels but then most of the time just refused to add anything human.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:16:04 2015 No.7131325 The book is meaningless garbage because war is meaningless garbage! Chekc and mate, you dumb conservatives!!!

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:27:34 2015 No.7131362 >>7127340 >tfw DFW would be a brony if he were alive today

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:28:45 2015 No.7131366 >>7131318 Did you read the D.T. Max biography? There was a part where his MFA peer remember him praising Crying of Lot 49 endlessly and thinking less of people who hadn't read it.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:31:58 2015 No.7131381 >>7131366 I didn't read it but I meant that's clearly not something he said in an interview. The anecdote is from it's reasonable to assume a much earlier period

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 14:34:47 2015 No.7131391 >>7131381 Do you remember where it did come from? I'm not doubting you but I'd like to look back at it. I have the book with most of his interviews and I think it was in there somewhere.

Anonymous Fri Sep 18 15:17:10 2015 No.7131519

>>7130496
Are you retarded? It's very explicitly a sodium Amytal trip while Slothrop is being tested in the White Visitation

>>7131325
I know you're trying to bug us, but what is your deal with Gravity's Rainbow exactly? Do you dislike all surrealism so strongly? I mean, I don't see why it's so confounding to you that GR could actually be a work of merit that people enjoy.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 15:22:33 2015 No.7131536 >>7131391 I don't remember it too well either but am fairly certain it was an interview with someone else, probably a friend of his?

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 15:44:54 2015 No.7131612 >>7130406 Evangelion is more metamodernist rather than postmodernist.

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 16:14:37 2015 No.7131696 >>7127675 What's the deal with the badger in the upper corner?

>>	Anonymous Fri Sep 18 16:17:03 2015 No.7131706 >>7131696 It's not just any badger, it's Taxidea taxus, newfag.

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/lit/ - Literature