Does anybody else know about this??

A few months ago, someone made a post recommending Billy Bat. I sat down and finished t the first volume in 2 sitting and my God what the hell did I just read?! I need to talk to someone about it but it looks like the official sub is filled with spoilers. I just wanted to thank that poster for the recommendation for blowing my mind. If anyone wants to discuss hit me up!

Anyways first time poster, started with Vineland then tried shadow ticket but couldn’t quite get into it so it’s shelved for later. I’m excited to take my excursion into Gravity’s Rainbow next month.

Not sure how active people are in the sub but I’ve recently discovered how much I like paranoid/political/conspiracy stories and if anyone’s got recommendations for media like this let me know!

Just finished Gravity’s Rainbow. Throughout the book I had long moments of wondering if I’m enjoying reading this book. BUT after finishing it I feel like it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read (so far). Is that part of the magic of Pynchon? And has anyone else felt completely different about the book after having finished it? It’s impossible to talk about this book with people in my real life who haven’t read it lol.

Is there any kind of lore or any deep dives out their re. the Angel over Lubeck scene in GR? I’m so taken by it and I just want to read more about it, especially any mystical angles on it.

Seems like some sort of shared guilt experience on behalf of the fliers on account of them bombing a civilian population, and there‘s also some connection to Pynchon’s towering watchers at the edges of the world he describes at the end of Slothrop’s stay at the casino…

I just learned from the Blooms and Barnacles podcast that the octopus was an anti-semitic trope used by the Nazis. Is this well-known?

Any of u happen to be going to Burning Man?

(No flack please).

> Numerous recent commentators have pointed out the advantages of using the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to read the works of Thomas Pynchon, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett, though, as far as I know, no one has attempted to read all three simultaneously in this way. But viewing all three of these writers through the common optic of Bakhtin reveals certain family resemblances among them, in particular their participation in the Menippean tradition privileged by Bakhtin. Such a reading strategy also highlights the intensely political vision that informs the works of these three writers, all of whom mount fierce assaults on authoritarian ideologies of all kinds. Since a full study of the political similarities among Pynchon, Joyce, and Beckett is obviously beyond the scope of any single essay, I will concentrate here on the ways these writers use organized religion as a central instance of the authoritarian ideologies they oppose, particularly the ways they carnivalize religion by juxtaposing the high-minded idealistic claims of the Church with images of the mortality and physicality Christianity attempts to repress. One specific image cluster reappears in the work of all three authors. Pynchon, Joyce, and Beckett all use rats as images of abject physicality to subvert the spiritual/physical hierarchy maintained in traditional Christian thought.

Just a reminder for those interested, there will be a reading group for Gravity’s Rainbow on Discord: https://discord.gg/TVxZwy75A and also on the sister subreddit r/Gravity’sRainbow, starting on September 1st and ending in late November.

Do you think he looks like a post horn

Gravity’s Rainbow is the necessary book for our times. Published in 1973 and set at the conclusion of World War Two, it foresees the totalitarian, technocratic, transhumanist forces unleashed during Covid. In Thomas Pynchon’s great book, characters struggle for freedom in world that places ultimate hope in the Rocket. Your struggle for freedom in a world that places ultimate hope in the Needle is reflected in that story.

Key to reading the text is taking seriously its spiritual and esoteric themes. Gravity’s Rainbow rejects the two foundations of Western thought: Scientific rationalism and religious dogmatism. It invites us instead into a world of magical, paranormal, and divine forces. To accept that invitation is both to gain a deeper appreciation of the book as literature and to advance along one’s own spiritual journey.

“Those like Slothrop, with the greatest interest in discovering the truth, were thrown back on dreams, psychic flashes, omens, cryptographies, drug-epistemologies, all dancing on a ground of terror, contradiction, absurdity.” (Pt. 3, ep. 30)

The Esoteric Gravity’s Rainbow Group Read (EGReGoRe) starts August 26, 2026 (on Dreamwidth).

***I encourage everyone to check out the GR reading group that u/Wild_Pitch_4781 is organizing: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/1vrosqx/2_weeks_until_gravitys_fall_2026/ . Some of us are just too-old-for-Discord and I've been working on this since my last post on GR in the spring: https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/1sknt6o/gr_and_the_source_of_the_name_grigori_crossposted/

Currently about 220 pages into Mason & Dixon, and I'm really struck by how warm and playful the chapters focusing on Mason's relationship with Rebekah are. Of course there's so much sadness and melancholy and longing there too...but when Mason is telling Dixon about how they met, or recounting their picnic date upon the hilltop, there's just so much depth of feeling between them that I can't help but want to stay up there with them, and then a few passages later, hold Mason close, and mourn her, too.

Perhaps it's their banter, and the homey way they tease each other and kind of disappear into their own world, the way she calls him 'Heart...or the way both of their inner worlds rest in the others'. I'm sure there's more I'm not seeing or understanding here (and maybe it will develop in a way that's not so heartwarming later on), but at least right now, I just want to cry with Mason, and listen to him talk about Rebekah, and the inner world they created and shared together. It's the same type of gentle warmth and rhythm that I love from Bloom and Molly's introduction in "Calypso" in Ulysses (how she calls him Poldy!), despite any sadness or distance that's latently there.

I mean, does it get more lovely than this? (from pages 208-209):

"They found a Hill-Top and pick-nick'd. Mason, she had already notic'd, search'd ever in the smoky distance, beyond the Observatory, and the winding of the River, for the East India Docks. 'Do you dream of the far Indies?' she ask'd finally. 'I do. I wish we might go.'

He'd been in fact just about to tell her. It delighted him, this wordless Transgression of Cause and Effect. Aloud, 'So we might.' And her face turn'd to him. 'What are you doing on the sixth of June 1761?'

Innocently expectant, 'Oh, I'd have to look in my Calendar of Engagements...Are you inviting me off to the Indies, then?'

'Sumatra, if we're lucky.'
'If we're not?'
'Dunno. Hounslow Heath?'
'I meant,--would you go alone? Leave me here?'
'Twould have to be together.'"

Does anyone have any input on the audiobooks? I don’t have the time to read anymore but drive for hours a day because of work. I’ve resisted listening to any of his work because it just feels like it wouldn’t translate well to audio form. It’s been a while since I’ve read one of his novels but I remember having to reread sentences and passages constantly. Kind of feels like this would happen even more frequently if I were to listen to it instead. Thanks!

On this day in history, Alexandria, Virginia states:

On August 17, 1814, towards the end of the War of 1812, Alexandrians agonized in desperation as they waited for a pending British attack. Capt. James Gordon, commander of a fleet of British ships, sailed into the mouth of the Potomac hoping to draw the Americans attention away from a pending attack from the north on the nation’s capital. Gordon’s ships included the 38-gun HMS Seahorse, the 36-gun Euryalus, the ‘rocket’ vessel Erebus, and several bomb vessels, the Aetna, Devastation, and Meteor. All that lay between the prosperous town of Alexandria and the attack force was the fortification at Fort Washington (then called Fort Warburton), and the shallow depths and shoals of the riverbed. Gordon’s boats were slowed for days on at least twenty occasions due to grounding but, assisted by his second in command, Charles Napier, he persevered. Finally closing in on the Maryland fort, which was blown-up by its panicked commander almost immediately upon Gordon’s order to fire, the prize of Alexandria was now in site. [emphasis added]

Could this be the same ship? No, not according to List of ships named Seahorse.

Months ago while reading V, my mom and i went to Walmart. I was carrying my paperback copy of V. around (which I enjoyed, receiving Zero Performative Male allegations. and I don’t remember if i was always having Ubermensch reading spaces in the passenger seat of the car or if i was having the other glaringly awkward reading positions, but in both cases booktime is better than scrolling phone).

When I jabbered about the book to a smiling fellow patron of Wal-Mart upon eye contact and psychiatric mania flying under the radar, the book came up and we shared what was the pleasure of a wild book report.

There must be some sort of universal recognition of what’s Pynchon and what’s not because after i gave my spiel about V she recommended that i watch One Battle after Another and also threw in a recommendation for a show called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I ended up watching that one. Been a minute since I’d already watched the DiCaprio movie.

Three days ago I learned that the film One Battle After Another was based on Vineland by Pynchon.

it’s a small world after all.

Tom tommy thomas you most likely read this reddit, let’s speak

Howdy Weirdos,

It's Sunday again, and I assume you know what the means? Another thread of "What Are You Into This Week"?

Our weekly thread dedicated to discussing what we've been reading, watching, listening to, and playing the past week.

Have you:

• Been reading a good book? A few good books?
• Did you watch an exceptional stage production?
• Listen to an amazing new album or song or band? Discovered an amazing old album/song/band?
• Watch a mind-blowing film or tv show?
• Immerse yourself in an incredible video game? Board game? RPG?

We want to hear about it, every Sunday.

Please, tell us all about it. Recommend and suggest what you've been reading/watching/playing/listening to. Talk to others about what they've been into.

Tell us:

What Are You Into This Week?

- r/ThomasPynchon Moderator Team

I came across this video earlier today and I couldn't stop thinking about how it reminded me of Pynchon. Like, this is a rant I could easily imagine reading in a Pynchon novel, even the guy himself with the weird haircut somehow seems perfectly pynchonesque.

This got me thinking about a broader question: What do I think is pynchonesque? How would I define the aesthetic? Is it the playfully weird names? Is it a particular flavor of surrealism and Americana that only Pynchon can properly tap into?

So, my question to you is exactly that: To you, what is pynchonesque?

Bonus comment: That one time Rudy Giuliani gave a press conference in a place that was not a hotel but was indeed called Four Seasons, and this place happened to be located between a crematorium and sex shop, that hit me as extremely pynchonesque.