V

accounts show pynchon had been thinking about mason and dixon since the 70s
It's got to be his favorite

i think its pretty good but then i only read it once. i got plenty out of it thematically but i guess you have to dig a bit you know what i mean.

not OP, but also reading V. right now. It's decidedly easier to read than his later books. His prose is more simplified/less stylish, but you get traces of later pynchon here. I was surprised by how little I reread for comprehension

Don't put effort into understanding those sections set in the past. They exist only to build a vague aura of mystery connecting several loosely based events together in a Stencilized way. There's like one piece of useful information in those chapters per ten pages and when you read them you'll know what they are.

If you're anything like me(a total piece of shit schlemiel) you'll fall in love with Profane and have dreams of one day finding a lazy semi-artist commune group of friends, so the chapters set in the present should be plenty entertaining.

I also feel that most people of our generation can relate pretty profoundly with Stencil. The guy has nothing to live for and so he sleeps for like 15 hours a day, but one day he discovers this vague mystery that may or may not exist but it gives him purpose in life and because it does he never pursues it so hard to answer all his questions but goes at such a speed to live with a vague sense of purpose in life.

Pretty strange, given that Mucho's introduction is probably, imo, one of Pynchon's most haunting and accurate characterizations of modern American life out there.

>and have dreams of one day finding a lazy semi-artist commune group of friends

Once I will say it, is all: that Crew does not live, it experiences. It does not create, it talks about people who do. Varese, Ionesco, de Kooning, Wittgenstein, I could puke. It satirizes itself and doesn't mean it. Time magazine takes it seriously and does mean it.

But they're fun, easygoing and self-aware enough that you can't really accuse them of being pretentious assholes. Who wouldn't want a social circle like that? And at the center of everything is the cutest nymphette who is inexplicably in love with you...Profane's life is my ideal life.

read Hopscotch, it does the pretentious arty clique thing so much better.