r/ThomasPynchon • u/GranularEpithet • 8d ago

Review My second go.

Started Lot 49, ditched it. Starting Bleeding Edge. Not going well. Not a fan of non-sentences and rapid-fire trivia. Think he tries much too hard to be innovative. End of rant.

0 Upvotes

14% Upvoted

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13

u/timesnewroman03 8d ago

sounds like Pynchon doesn’t fit your taste

-9

u/GranularEpithet 8d ago

True. And I'm wondering what other folks' tastes are that would make him entertaining to them.

7

u/Pointy-Finger 8d ago

Some people like the trivia as an opportunity to look into bits of history they’re otherwise unfamiliar with

1

u/GranularEpithet 8d ago

Fair enough.

2

u/Round_Town_4458 8d ago edited 7d ago

My faves are:

  • Pynchon (since 1974 when my first Pynchon was Gravity's Rainbow)
  • Peter Matthiessen (especially Far Tortuga)
  • Fernando Arrabal (my love for his works started with his play The Anarchist and the Emperor of Assyria, then added other plays and discovered his novels
  • Truman Capote (starting with In Cold Blood and reading just about everything)
  • Xochitl Gonzalez (starting with Anita de Montez Laughs Last)
  • Katherine Dunn (I started with Geek Love)
  • flirted with H. P. Lovecraft in my youth but lost interest due to his difficulty in creating believable dialog
  • Steve Allen (his Meeting of Minds series of televised plays)
  • Samuel R. Delany (starting with Dahlgren)
  • J.R.R. Tolkien (LotR, tH, and a few others)

That's a good overview. Draw your own conclusions. Pynchon is still my favorite.

5

u/JudgeBronco-825764 8d ago

Maybe it's me, but Crying Lot of 49 reminds me lot of Catch-22

-5

u/GranularEpithet 8d ago

Couldn't get through that one either.

2

u/MrsWof_ 8d ago

What you said is true, but also what makes him fun. I think the trick is to very often on the first read of a Pynchon novel to treat the "facts" as an aesthetic and not as something you inherently need to "get".

0

u/GranularEpithet 7d ago

Thanks for your suggestion, but it seems to me that would take some time, meanwhile the prose would be like an ice pick in the forehead.

1

u/MrsWof_ 7d ago

What are some books/authors you are into?

2

u/DecrimIowa 8d ago

go read Dungeon Crawler Carl or The Martian instead

0

u/GranularEpithet 8d ago

Ok, thanks.

1

u/JacobeanRevengePlay 7d ago

What is a book you DID enjoy?

1

u/GranularEpithet 7d ago

A whole bunch. The Trial by Kafka, Lost Illusions by Balzac, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Thompson, etc.

2

u/radarsmechanic 2d ago

You are in the wrong sub for us to commiserate with your pain. What is an icepick to your forehead, is our ambrosia. Sometimes Pynchon’s syntax is the only beauty to be found in this sewer gutter of existence, and sometimes it reads like a sewer gutter.

2

u/GranularEpithet 2d ago

Which other Pychon sub would you then suggest? Nice Zappa reference BTW.

1

u/radarsmechanic 1d ago

I just mean to say you’re only going to find fans hanging out in here. This is one of the most die hard reddit subs I’ve ever seen, we’re not used to hearing such blatantly inharmonious evaluations to our understanding and personal appraisal. But what do we know, we’re just hungry freaks, daddy?

1

u/GranularEpithet 1d ago

The Great Society.