|
its definitely 'surrealist' so if you're looking for a traditional story or plotline of any kind, it may be a big confusing letdown. i love it for the thoughts, the imagery, the moments, just let it wash over you like a wild hallucination and enjoy the ride imo
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 22:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 02:37 |
|
|
It can be tough to wrestle with a text to understand what, if any of it, is making sense. Especially if the narrator is already known to be unreliable. Blake Butler comes to mind. I loved 300,000,000 despite the fact it wasn't any good.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 22:48
|
|
|
Mason & Dixon was also the first Pynchon I read and it hooked me for life
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
fridge corn posted:Mason & Dixon was also the first Pynchon I read and it hooked me for life Good lord I'd never thought of it as an entry text. I guess....?
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 23:01
|
|
|
I was listening to a woman talk about Crying of Lot 49 the other day and she made an interesting point that people get so focused on the games and themes in the work that people miss that at its heart the novella is a story of a woman trying desperately to seek out a meaning to the lost relationship she had, and in doing so make sense of the mess that her life had become after it fell apart. In a sense shifting the death of her ex and the execution of his will from a starting point in a larger quest to making the inciting event the crux of the novel and everything that comes after a reaction by her searching for a sort of love note from the beyond. As someone who has always viewed Lot 49 as a sort of dry run for GR and a psychical purging by Pynchon of the various secret and semi secret knowledge he'd gained in his time working the defense industry I must say that it made me want to reread the work and see how much I agree with that woman and If I agree that it is not a novel of the investigations of Oedpia Maas but rather the Investigation of Oedipa Maas.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 23:43
|
|
|
I see Lot 49 as a skeleton map for the way Pynchon wants to explore alienation, conspiracy, and the destruction of love in a post-War world. His characters are deeply inhabited, yes, but it's his consistent ideology that shines through. Maybe that doesn't always translate to being emotionally trenchant on the page, but many times it does.
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2023 23:52
|
|
|
I finally read (after leaving it for last) the Pynchon juvenilia book and his introduction where he talked poo poo about Lot 49 as not really a novel and being more about a theme than a character had the inverse impact of making me like it more somehow, since it seemed like a milady doth protest too much situation But I also have been one or two additional mental crises from getting a WASTE muted post horn tattoo at various times in my life so grain of salt there
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 00:29
|
|
|
Gaius Marius posted:Question for the thread. I'm a pretty young guy forums wise but recently I've started to see more and more people appealing to a sort of mediocrity. Disliking anything using five dollar words, having harder than average prose, being challenging to their base worldview in any way. I must ask. Do you guys also feel this? And if so, do you believe it's becoming more present in society, or at least forum society? Well, after Bravest of the Lamps was banned we lost his extremely elevated taste as well as idiosyncratic proclivities for criticizing books for mixing latinate and anglo-saxon words. A lot of it was nonsense but entertaining nonsense, and sometimes he was on the nose. He was the most rabidly anti-mediocrity poster to his detriment.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 02:24
|
|
|
Nitevision posted:Just read A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck. Didn't realize the author was a Mormon. Won't be making that mistake again. Because of Mormons in general or his Mormonism?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 03:20
|
|
|
mdemone posted:I see Lot 49 as a skeleton map for the way Pynchon wants to explore alienation, conspiracy, and the destruction of love in a post-War world. His characters are deeply inhabited, yes, but it's his consistent ideology that shines through. Maybe that doesn't always translate to being emotionally trenchant on the page, but many times it does. About the destruction of love in the post WWII world and the general unthreading of society; I kept trying to grapple with how much of Against the Day was him coming to terms with his view being more based on his overemphasizing of the contemporary in importance and his self mythologization of the past versus how much of it was him just trying to extend the lead up to WWII farther into the past. I assume Son and Xon would clear up my thoughts some.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 04:18
|
|
|
Pynchon's maybe my favorite writer and I am also willing to admit that I barely understand half of what is happening in his books. The prose is always beautiful, and the themes poke through the fog so brilliantly that I simply don't care that I'm frequently flummoxed. Also, poo poo is funny.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 18:36
|
|
|
if we're to buy the premises of this very lightly-sourced paper, the gamers in here love difficult reading due to their sadomasochistic fetishist tendencies, the cinephiles would rather not as they're in it for the scopophilic voyeuristic narcissism, and the tv viewers r elsewhere because they're too busy half-watching tiktoks. its that simple
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 19:25
|
|
|
InnercityGriot posted:Pynchon's maybe my favorite writer and I am also willing to admit that I barely understand half of what is happening in his books. The prose is always beautiful, and the themes poke through the fog so brilliantly that I simply don't care that I'm frequently flummoxed. Also, poo poo is funny. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 19:44
|
|
|
I’m happy to concede that Pynchon is a phenomenal prose stylist, which is why it makes me sad that I don’t enjoy him. however, anyone who laughs at all the zaniness, wacky character names and irritating song pastiches should have a v2 rocket dropped on their head I make only one exception and it’s the bit in lot 49 when he rhymes “periscope’ll” with “Constantinople”. Highlight of the book, right there.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 20:01
|
|
|
Lobster Henry posted:I’m happy to concede that Pynchon is a phenomenal prose stylist, which is why it makes me sad that I don’t enjoy him. however, anyone who laughs at all the zaniness, wacky character names and irritating song pastiches should have a v2 rocket dropped on their head I feel about this post the way I assume others feel when I tell them that I think Disco Elysium is a try hard, poorly written and unfunny game.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 20:58
|
|
|
Disco Elysium had good world building
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 21:19
|
|
|
but did it have any whirled buildings?
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 21:26
|
|
|
derp posted:but did it have any whirled buildings? The first building you see is the Whirling-in-Rags
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 22:15
|
|
|
Lobster Henry posted:however, anyone who laughs at all the zaniness, wacky character names and irritating song pastiches should have a v2 rocket dropped on their head I am sorry to inform you that Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke is an all-time literary home run and a baller
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 22:45
|
|
|
InnercityGriot posted:I am sorry to inform you that Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke is an all-time literary home run and a baller I could read that first chapter every night to get ready for bed
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
Anyways I finished the Kreutzer Sonata the other night. I feel the same way I feel about most other Tolstoy stories, he is an absolute master of his craft in writing the internal of a character; the passages as the man is going to kill his wife nail perfectly the kind of anger and blinding absurdity one feels in such heated situations, little things like the man not wanting to appear ridiculous chasing down the other man in his stockings or putting the knife back in it's dropped case encapsulate that weird tunnel vision and microfocus that goes on when you've totally lost control of the big picture. That said, I also find Tolstoy a completely unconvincing writer. It's hard to explain what I mean here, but compare him to Dostoevsky there is a man who in every line I feel a genuine and heartfelt desire to share his own worldview and make you share in both his suffering and his joy; he's not trying to convince himself of what he believes he's trying to convince you. Tolstoy, to me, always seems to be trying to convince himself of the poo poo he is saying. Couldn't dodge that feeling in Anna K. and couldn't here, that everything he is writing down is a sort of mental exercise to justify and examine his own behavior in regards to his wife and towards society at large; personally I find both of those things ridiculous and abhorrent in equal measure. It's a shame such a fine writer could never escape his own worst tendencies and write something truly majestic.
|
|
#
?
Nov 3, 2023 23:54
|
|
|
Earwicker posted:Heinlein is also responsible for every time some annoying nerd says "grok". i'm from the future, earwicker, and you are going to love the news i have to share
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 06:00
|
|
|
I also hate it when ppl say grok
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 09:22
|
|
|
i hate it when babies get upset about fun words
|
|
#
?
Nov 5, 2023 15:29
|
|
|
My husband and I have been listening to audiobooks instead of watching tv because there's nothing good on streaming. It's been great. We've been working through a bunch of Kazuo Ishiguro's books - so far Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go, partway through Remains of the Day now. Klara was my favorite so far. I enjoy his naive narrators and simple prose
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 19:53
|
|
|
reading young werther’s sorrows again goethe is ftw
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 22:31
|
|
|
I keep meaning to pick up a copy of his conversations with Eckermann and keep forgetting to do so
|
|
#
?
Nov 6, 2023 22:42
|
|
|
ulvir posted:reading young werther’s sorrows again Goethe's cool, i'm crawling through wilhelm meister right now ... definitely like reading don quixote where you just wander through recognising things that every subsequent european novel would do
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2023 10:42
|
|
|
a.p. dent posted:My husband and I have been listening to audiobooks instead of watching tv because there's nothing good on streaming. It's been great. We've been working through a bunch of Kazuo Ishiguro's books - so far Klara and the Sun and Never Let Me Go, partway through Remains of the Day now. Klara was my favorite so far. I enjoy his naive narrators and simple prose That’s interesting, I thought Klara was sort of mid-level Ishiguro, but I read it last out of all of them, so that may skew things. I’d like to revisit it someday. I’m extremely fond of The Buried Giant. It didn’t seem very popular and some people bounced right off the fantasy trappings, but I think it’s really interesting, very moving in the final stretch, and strikes a very strange and unique tone that can’t have been easy to pull off.
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2023 14:54
|
|
|
I am a huge fan of the Buried Giant. Really beautiful love story that very effectively plays with a lot of tropes of medieval fiction and fantasy
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2023 16:11
|
|
|
Nice, probably will do that one next then!
|
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2023 16:18
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:It's two things, really: one, constant wrestling with the text to get some semblance of meaning out of it, two, the constant feel that I don't "get it" and missed something important. the 'meaning' is that the images are cool and you get to imagine them in your brain when you read the book
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 09:06
|
|
|
Lobster Henry posted:I’m happy to concede that Pynchon is a phenomenal prose stylist, which is why it makes me sad that I don’t enjoy him. however, anyone who laughs at all the zaniness, wacky character names and irritating song pastiches should have a v2 rocket dropped on their head it's hard to believe that someone on this forum would dislike reading jokes
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 09:07
|
|
|
If anyone, like me, is having a slow day at work, I recommend that you read, like me, “Mysterious Kor”, a short story by Elizabeth Bowen. It’s easy to find online. Here are the opening two paragraphs to hook you in:quote:Full moonlight drenched the city and searched it; there was not a niche left to stand in. The effect was remorseless: London looked like the moon's capital—shallow, cratered, extinct. It was late, but not yet midnight; now the buses had stopped the polished roads and streets in this region sent for minutes together a ghostly unbroken reflection up. The soaring new flats and the crouching old shops and houses looked equally brittle under the moon, which blazed in windows that looked its way. The futility of the black-out became laughable: from the sky, presumably, you could see every slate in the roofs, every whited kerb, every contour of the naked winter flowerbeds in the park; and the lake, with its shining twists and tree-darkened islands would be a landmark for miles, yes, miles, overhead.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 13:36
|
|
|
I started The Sunken Road by Ciaran McMenamin last night as part of a larger trip I'm on about novels concerning borders and borderlands (please share any recommendations along those lines). It's an interesting novel about Irish politics and divided loyalties set immediately before and after the Irish War of Independence. It's also a great action and suspense novel.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 18:43
|
|
|
PeterWeller posted:I started The Sunken Road by Ciaran McMenamin last night as part of a larger trip I'm on about novels concerning borders and borderlands (please share any recommendations along those lines). It's an interesting novel about Irish politics and divided loyalties set immediately before and after the Irish War of Independence. It's also a great action and suspense novel. Signs Preceding The End of The World by Yuri Herrera is one of my favorite novels. The border in question is between the US and Mexico, but also much more than that. A lot of how you perceive the book depends on whether you’re familiar with Aztec mythology, but the novel works either way.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 19:03
|
|
|
Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Signs Preceding The End of The World by Yuri Herrera is one of my favorite novels. The border in question is between the US and Mexico, but also much more than that. A lot of how you perceive the book depends on whether you’re familiar with Aztec That's a great novel. I loved his Kingdom Cons (about a folk singer who works for a cartel boss) and The Transmigration of Bodies (about a cartel fixer during a pandemic) as well.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2023 19:19
|
|
|
NYRB is having a sale. Anyone picking anything up? I saw upthread people talking about Stoner and Augustus. Grabbing both of those myself, Flaubert's Collected Letters, and Bresson's Notes on Cinematography.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 00:19
|
|
|
A human heart posted:it's hard to believe that someone on this forum would dislike reading jokes It's okay for people to have Opinions of Questionable Taste
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 01:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 02:37 |
|
|
senses of humor vary widely. the descriptions of pynchon's wacky action and character names have left me with little interest in reading him. crying of lot 49 i did read, and it just confirmed that he's not to my taste. cant have everybody loving a thing, otherwise it wouldn't be good.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2023 01:50
|
|