Here's that description:
“Surrounded by history he has no grasp on and can’t see his way around in or out of, the only bright side for Hicks is it’s the dawn of the Big Band Era and as it happens he’s a pretty good dancer. Whether this will be enough to allow him somehow to lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee and the normal world, which may no longer exist, is another question.”
He withholds commas until he doesn't and I presume he's got his reasons.
I like "lindy-hop his way back again to Milwaukee" and "Milwaukee and the normal world."
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30 comments:
I've always meant to read Gravity's Rainbow, but never got around to it. I was tired of WW II, so I put it off. Maybe now's the time if I can get it on audiobook.
https://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page this is a guide to all his works, with the last one
Rocean. Read "V" first. Then throw them both away. Read "The Crying of Lot 49".
Aren't we all surrounded by history of which we have no grasp and can’t see our way around in or out of?
Rusty. I'll read "The Crying lot" - thanks
the minutae around Rainbow, like the Herero fate and the Rocket program was interesting, Bleeding Edge not so much,
Vineland was topical in the barking mad echo chamber of the 80s,
I thought writers always did their own blurbs. You wouldn't want it written by some dope at the publisher who doesn't get it.
I listened to "Gravity's Rainbow" on audiobook and didn't see much point in it. "Crying" -- meh. "V." sounded more interesting.
Pynchon still publishing at 87 deserves a salute him for the effort and congratulations on his mental health!
Still cranking out long sentences at 87. Good for him. Gives me hope I might finish a paragraph one day.
"Crying" is fun, but it's a young person's book, in my view. V was obscure and pointless to me, but maybe I should have waited to read it. I gave up on Mason Dixon and never tried Gravity's Rainbow.
Will any of Pynchon's works stand the test of time? I don't see anyone reading V. , Gravity's Rainbow, or any of the other novels. Did he create any memorable characters that have become a part of our cultural treasure? No. Did he identify some human spiritual crisis and illuminate its implications? No. He's gotten a lot of mileage from somehow managing to be mysteriously cool.
I admire those who have lived well on the basis of their wit. Well done, Pynchon. I admire more those who have built something of lasting worth. Not so well done, Pynchon.
Gravity's Rainbow is the most enjoyable book I've ever read. I've lost count of the number of times I've read it. The audiobook is, unfortunately, read by George Guidall who I can't stand. I tried, thinking the quality of the book would maybe compensate, but no, it was just awful. He stripped all of the humor out of it for starters. It's a very funny book.
Mason & Dixon is nearly as good.
Lot 49 is short, but it only shows one (or one and a half) of the many things that Pynchon can do.
I read The Crying of Lot 49 decades ago and it struck me as a very typical book by USA novelists of the 1960's: whiney, liberal, degenerate...they all use the word "tendrils" about 100 times in every book. Then I read a book of short stories he wrote in the 80's that I can't remember one single thing about.
I am impressed that he's still writing at 87.
Pynchon was too literary for me. Everyone told me how great he was, so I tried ... OK, I only sorta tried. I couldn't see the point.
"history he has no grasp on"
Isn't "of" normal usage, not "on?"
I may reread the Pynchons that I have read already--I stopped at GR.
That one must be hell on a reader, I think. So many odd characters and incidents, getting the right tone sounds daunting.
Where’s Tyrone Slothrop when you really need him? Commas can be fun when used in Pynchon’s riff on “you never did. The Kenosha kid”. (Who is Not Kyle Rittenhouse.)
I've been spoiled by too much Elmore Leonard. While a novel about a depression-era PI, written by a literary great, seems like a perfect book for me, the man is using too many words.
well it seems to be mostly set in the Europe of the 30s, on the eve of World War, some of alan furst's early work
I've tried reading GR three times and just can't get into it.
I vaguely remember seeing post horn graffiti on bathroom walls. People must have read back in those long-ago days.
GR was one of the few long novels I read to the exclusion of everything but eating and sleeping, over a long weekend. And a lot of it has stuck with me, which is not always the case.
I read Gravity's Rainbow. Reading Fenimore Cooper was a happier experience.
I gave up on Gravity's Rainbow. I knew it was a worthwhile book, but too elaborate for me. That's not a knock. I gave up on Joyce's Ulysses and many consider it the greatest novel of all time......I did get through Kerouac's On The Road. I didn't consider it anything special but it was comprehensible and had just enough narrative drive to get you to the end.......I like 19th century novels the best. The novelists were writing in the most vital medium of their day and were writing about the most vital themes of their day in the clearest way possible. Starting in the 20th century, high brow fiction has gotten hairier and hairier,.
The blurb sounds sorta like the one he wrote for Against the Day. I have a love/hate relationship with that book; parts of it are deliberately ugly and hateful, and other parts shine with the light of a thousand suns. I’ll probably read this one.
My quick take on Pynchon is that when he wants to be, he’s as good as it gets, but post-Mason & Dixon (which is my favorite of his works), he doesn’t want to very often. Oh well, it’s his life.
Narr said...
"I may reread the Pynchons that I have read already--I stopped at GR.
That one must be hell on a reader, I think. So many odd characters and incidents, getting the right tone sounds daunting."
It was his "Russian" novel. He went to Cornell(?) to be an engineer and took a writing class under Nabikov.
I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow when I was 19. It made no sense then and started and ended my interest in Pynchon. Lately, I've seen his name come up more in more and more but I'm still uninterested in giving him another chance. With the TBR pile in the spare room and what's accumulated in my Kindle library, I may have enough books stored up to last the rest of life, anyway.
Am I the only one who has read "V"?
Rusty: No.
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