Why do people here hate this?

Read it with pencil and paper. Pynchon is talking about really specific stuff.

The movie is good but is missing ~80% of the novel.

It's really Beethoven's 8th of the Pinecone bibliography.

what's bad about vineland and bleeding edge? besides the "pynchon lite" tag (which, after reading inherent vice, i find to be kind of stupid)

Haven't read Vineland or his stories yet. Inherent Vice is great and I'm not afraid to say I'd rank it up with GR and M&D. There's a guy on Veeky Forums who's read all of Pynchon and done a bunch of academic work on him and claims Vineland is his best. So there you go.

People see that he's working within a genre and immediately think it's less important/less deep than the sprawling, crazy, obviously challenging and incomprehensible 800 page novel.

I haven't read Bleeding Edge since it was first published and really owe it a re-read. My immediate reaction was a mixed bag, but as it stands it's probably his book I enjoyed least.
Makes a pretty good point, I've never felt finished with a Pynchon novel till I've read it twice.

I'm not sure what your problem is. To say Inherent Vice doesn't compare to Gravity's Rainbow is not controversial, nor dismissive of Inherent Vice's merits.

I think this board is really unfair to Vineland. I think it's probably Pynchon's most mature novel, full of his most human characters and real human sorrow. I've never loved the ending, but that's not enough to discredit the brilliant writing that precedes it. Vineland is also way less tame than everyone makes it out to be, structurally it's far more complex than V. or Lot 49 and some of the Thanatoid episodes are downright surrealist.

> besides the "pynchon lite" tag

That's all there is. They haven't read his later novels more than twice. They took a surface read and thought they understood all of it, and all Pynchon wanted to do was write a book for more weed money.

"Dunces all" - Martin Scribler

>what's bad about vineland
nothing
>and bleeding edge?
it's an unhip homage to the late 90's and a weak integration of cyberpunk tropes into the landscape of the early internet

What does Veeky Forums think of this?

>To say Inherent Vice doesn't compare to Gravity's Rainbow is not controversial

GR is amazing, but I don't think you learn less about the world by only reading Inherent Vice.

There's a lot of passages in GR where I'm sure many readers, including Pynchon himself, thought could have been edited out. But everyone will defend this as a necessary turbulence to depict a chaotic world.

Inherent Vice is just a perfect little gem of a novel and people act ripped off.

I read everything Pynchon with a pencil and notebook. I laughed in the Inherent Vice film when we see Doc mapping out all the characters because that's exactly what Pynchon's readers do and I'm sure PTA was making a goof of it.

> a weak integration of cyberpunk tropes into the landscape of the early internet

Dude, you totally missed the point of Bleeding Edge. REEEEEE.

I bet Pynchon reads so many reviews of his work and just shakes his head. "Guys as bright as Edward Mendelson" still can't figure out CoL 49.

Yeah, I noticed that as well.

There's just a ton of history in IV that people miss out on. It's right there, below the surface like Lemuria.

The other thing is that I believe Doc Sportello is basically Pynchon while writing/researching GR.There's a connection between Shasta in IV and Bianca in GR

From the little we know of his life, I think it's his most straight-forwardly autobiographical.

Without giving away too much, what Vineland does and why it employs the particular method you see in it makes thematic sense, but it ultimately comes off as a fairly underwhelming book and one that missed a lot of opportunities. That's part of "the point" to some extent, but it still feels like it could've been handled better and been more presentable if there was more effort put into it.

Bleeding Edge has a lot more charm than Vineland unless one is inclined to live with a stick shoved firmly up their ass, and it's perfectly fine if you completely ignore who wrote it, but it only has occasional faint whiffs of what makes Pynchon's books great and memorable. You could forcibly elevate it to a level somewhere near his best stuff if you're desperately willing to make it "work" by reading into it a lot more heavily than you really need to, but it comes off like vaporware; maybe a 30-40% complete beta of what it could have been if it was written by the Pynchon of V. or GR.

Bleeding Edge is just a sad experience if you go into it expecting him at his best.

> Zoyd Wheeler is Jerry Garcia

What would Zoyd think about The Warlocks?

what are your tips for note-taking on pynchon, or just in general? i write down characters and their relationships, and definitions of new words, but i feel like i could be taking more notes

>Bleeding Edge is just a sad experience if you go into it expecting him at his best.

People just don't like Maxine and think Pynchon is trying a bit hard to make her seem likeable or clever. It's still a very strong novel and Pynchon refuses to cater even to his own fans' expectations.

Look at the history. Pynchon is always being specific and it's not just to name-drop stuff readers would recognize.

Pynchon was from the East Coast, a Navyman, an engineer, a - gee! - writer ... Doc's a West Coast dropout stoner without a whole lot going on upstairs. Of course he's got some Pynchon in him, the same way Benny Profane and Tyrone Slothrop (part of the Slothtop family history being taken right out of the Pynchon family history) but calling Doc autobiographical is a bit of a stretch.

Dude, you're a retard.

He lived in California while writing GR. He lived in Manhattan Beach with a gf of the age of 17, who claims she was the inspiration for Bianca, and her father is probably the inspiration for the father of what's her name in IV.

He lived and partied with hippies and got them to help him research for his novels and they all swore to keep his identity secret.

Read more.

And do check out the documentary Journey into the Mind of P.

Pynchon cheekily references it in IV, right down the soundtrack of the documentary.

I'm fully aware he lived and wrote in California, but it still doesn't make the character autobiographical.

>Pynchon cheekily references it in IV, right down the soundtrack of the documentary.
Where is this?

You know when someone does a remake of something and hits the checklist of all the things the original does on the surface but fails to understand why those elements worked in the original? It's like that.

>IV,

dont you mean V.?

Not him but doubtful, as V. is his first novel and the documentary is about him as a successful writer...

could you explain?

Inherent vice.

The difference between superman wearing the tights, and your dad dressing up for Halloween in superman's tights.

meant to

>There's a lot of passages in GR where I'm sure many readers, including Pynchon himself, thought could have been edited out.

I don't agree. Not only is it a 'necessary turbulence,' but even the most convoluted and long-winded of the passages serve a purpose in fleshing out the ever-growing-more complex present moment, something that is conveniently left out for clarity and concision in the average modern novel. Simply put, the book doesn't rely on strict causality in prose, just as its metaphors suggest about the rockets, Slothrop's dick, science, etc..

I agree. No part of that book feels unnecessary. It is structured to perfection.

@8357026
i'm gonna give you a chance to retract that statement
go ahead and delete your post asap

structured to
PERFECTION
E
R
F
E
(etc.)

>@

I mean in Inherent Vice all the classical "Pynchon elements" are there like paranoia and conspiracy and wacky red herring names, but in something like The Crying of Lot 49 it serves a strict thematic purpose whereas in IV it's only there because it's "typical Pynchon isn't he such a wacky paranoid dude". This is why they call it Pynchon-lite. and yeah kinda like this guy says is that it has all the dressing of a Pynchon novel but those recognizable surface elements are really the only thing it has. It's like a new AC/DC album.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don't believe that Doc is based on Pynchon, but rather my uncle, who was a major hippie, a huge Dead Head, and lived in Manhattan Beach between 1962 and 1979, and claims to have known and lived close to Pynchon

but then again, how many aging ex-hippies don't claim to know the Pynchster?

Yummy Yummy Yummy I got love in my tummy and I feel like a-lovin' you.

Morons, do you homework.

Why is Sauncho a marine lawyer? What's a "marine lawyer" anyway?

Oh, right, the fucking internet was created on a house boat in the California coast.

On paper, yes.

the fuck you sperging about

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law

lanierlawfirm.com/legal_practice_areas/maritime_law/

>Maritime Law (also known as Admiralty Law) is a separate body of law governing a variety of maritime-related disputes.

How does it feel, being this retarded?

epic bait dood
so angry pynchon autist
you are high-larious

I never got the impression that Doc is not an intelligent character. He is a good detective, but he is just stoned constantly.

I just finished this and listened to a few episodes of Pynchon in Public. On the show, they mentioned that there was a "missing day" inserted between two real days where he gets Adrian's file and talk to Hamilton's (???) head on a restaurant wall.

Can anybody tell me the significance of this?

You sure he's not a Marine who happens to be a lawyer?

ARPAnet, you dunce.

Can't remember but I feel like there was a missing day in Mason & Dixon as well.

There were more than a few missing days in M&D . . . missing years in ATD . . .

Plebs don't know IV is about the creation of the internet.

but it isn't... I hate Veeky Forums's penchant to come up with these IMDB tier "fan theories", so dismissive of the texts' actual thematic strengths. As bad as the cringeworthy Torquato Tasso theory.

The Tasso theory is brilliant and helps to understand Pynchon's relations to all his other texts and their layers of hidden meaning.

Dude was literally scared about publishing the stuff he was writing about in his books.

Fan theories are exactly what Pynchon wants.

He doesn't want neutral, safe, academic readings.

ARPAnet is an actual plot point in the book, but saying that the whole thing is "about" it, doesn't really make sense.

Of course it's not solely about the internet.

That's just a popular song. If it was more obscure I would go along, but I'm not doubting that Pynchon saw the documentary. Did the documentary ever air on tv?

I hate it because it tries to be funny but isn't funny. Humor is a double edged sword. If it works everybody thinks you're great. But if you try to be funny and you aren't, people really fucking hate you.

"Where you at, man?"

i thought it was pretty funny. i laughed out loud plenty of times

What's the Tasso theory, or at the very least how do I search for it? My googlefu is weak.

t. Pynchon.

Reading it rn. I don't really hate it so far, but maybe that's because I'm a pleb.

To quote Michiko Kakutani: ‘Paranoia in Inherent Vice is less a political or metaphysical state than a byproduct of smoking too much weed.'

Never mind. I found it.

Because it has been made into a movie. And if there is one thing Veeky Forums hates, it's popular book.

Kakutani is decent, I don't hate her, but Slothtrop smoked a lot of weed too.

>this scene
fuggggg

>implying Pynchon wasn't self consciously pastiching the greatest excesses of his own style

It's starts out really well, super fun, then after 600 pages it's just too much. Lots of fun episodes, but not much connection between them, doesn't work like M&D, a solid 4/10.

>4/10

pleb detected

It was really hit or miss the whole way through for me. Took me 6 months to read and my comprehension of what was going on was usually low.
I don't think my read of it was enough to formulate a real opinion.

Inherent Vice is Pynchon's unspoken masterpiece veiled in plainer-than-usual prose. There's a lot of great ideas getting thrown out, the obvious one that newcomers I'm not sure would be aware of IV serving as an adaptation of Don Quixote (Don=Doc=idealist trying work his way through illogical structures/ chivalric novels ruined Don=movies and television Doc obsessed over affects him the same way, also not to mention the obvious Sauncho=Sancho, of course the realistic scribe would be adapted to a lawyer). Without going on and on about the more-than-obvious adaptation, one of the most interesting moments I've read in contemporary lit happens the moment before the 'Lost Day" (look it up on the pynchon wiki if you're unfamiliar), where Roman Holiday and Godzilla 3 play back-to-back (Godzilla 3 is a remake of RH with Godzilla thrown in), at this moment in a post-modern pulpy neo-noir mixed with hilarity of surf culture (growing up in a surf-town, he nails it) novel that's a clear adaptation of the canonical Quixote, we witness Doc watch a cult-film obscure remake of the canonized Roman Holiday. It's such a brilliant moment to mirror the reader of Doc, I think about it all the time. I might drop in later to check replies, but my other idea about this is that it's a clear reaction to Nabokov's theory of the Quixote as a dismal nihilism and that Doc's conspiratorial paranoia takes the place of that, in a nihilist hedonistic society of 60s California, what more does Doc have to believe then strange social webs and conspiratorial global plots?

can anyone recc some books with similar humour and characters

wew
TCOL49

Great post. I'll have to watch Roman Holiday now and read some Nabokov criticism. Pynchon did study under him, so no doubt he's familiar with Nabokov's criticisms.

Can you tell me more about Nabokov on Don Quixote? I recall he didn't like it. Saying it was a cruel compilation of torture or something like that. I guess he didn't like Cervantes' style, even though Flaubert loved Don Quixote and Madame Bovary is a reworking of the novel.

man, i woke up my dogs with how many times i laughed out loud reading IV. humor is highly subjective, but i'm aghast when people don't find Pynchon's work hilarious.

while i think Gravity's Rainbow is his masterpiece, i enjoyed reading and rereading Against the Day more. the characters are more nuanced and the prose isn't as avant garde or surrealistic. however, i think Against the Day is three or possibly four different novels entwined as one and does take dedication to read it.

The more I learn about early 20th century history the more I want to read it but I'll tackle Vineland first.

Pynchon studying under Nabokov is still sort of unknown, but pretty probable (Nabokov's wife recalls Pynchon's handwriting but Vlad couldn't remember him, also doesn't matter because Nabokov's influence on Pynchon is still easily seen in any of Pynchon's books: the South African section in M&D, the song by the Paranoids in TCOL49, any psycho-sadistic sections of GR, etc etc).

He called it "cruel and crude" but I believe he still loved it and cherished its turning point in literature;; creating the modern novel (along with Rabelais, Petrus Alfonsi and Chaucer to an extent but that's a different conversation).

To boil down Nabokov's Quixote criticism, he believes that its the brutal decay of a young idealist unable to live with purpose and just becomes a jester to all of society even though he tries to create meaning for himself based off of all of his interactions with chivalric novels. He says the satirical element just isn't there in Don Quixote, that he's just tortured for who he is throughout the entire novel (I don't think that Nabokov makes the case for mental illness at all, as that'd be out of character for him and sort of redundant because DQ shows quite clearly his mental illness). He's everyone's punching bag, while all he represents is unadulterated youthful optimism and idealism.

Obviously an abridged version to the longwindedness of his lectures.

fuck that's a good post

wait, which godzilla is godzilla 3

Interesting but I don't know what to make of it.

Got any insight on all these lost days/years in Pynchon novels?

I vaguely recall Doc watching some TV show with some kind of parallel time that audiences couldn't follow.

recurring themes. Very often his characters display paranoia, insecurity, uncontrollable sex drive, and ambivalence.

at least those are some the themes I take away, I'm sure some Pynchonscholars will correct me with their undeniable knowledge.

Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster

Which part? Just so I can clarify, I was pretty short in any rationale.

>lost days/years
I think it's something beyond just a "Pynchon universe" type situation like Tarantino fans usually obsess over. Mainly, I think it gets back to V., someone on here posted their thesis proposal a while ago, and it was a great conversation so I hope he's still around somewhere on here, about how the yo-yoing in V. deals with our understanding of history, these countercurrents of order and chaos. Its tough for us to not think of history in a linear or objective way, the loss of time is always some sort of constant reminder the way we misrepresent the past. This isn't a new idea, it goes back to Plutarch's Lives: think about his biography of Alexander the Great, he's writing the first biography of someone centuries after the fact, built on word of mouth and even says theres no way that this is all true but the stories around it give Alexander a new sort of truth (there's something about him seeing someone's body with a birthmark shaped like bull horns with testicles and that resonated as a bad omen for him and caused him to go to India). In M&D and IV both show that there is never going to be truth to any histories, it doesn't satirize it by any means, but it seeks to create a new history, built out of intrigue and wonder, which if we can understand people's personalities as characters, that can be a lot more helpful then trying to build off of limited sources. Pynchon's own epistemology is increasingly built more off of memory, mythos and the soft sciences, than math, data, and the hard sciences (think of the occult references of GR, science is degraded beyond scope in that novel as being the inhuman element of Slothrop, also lest we forget the reference to Proust with the Fantastic Four caricature of Proust as the Marcel the Mechanical Turk searching for the Radiant Hour- In Search of Lost Time; always memory and mythos is playing a significant role). Less theoretical, and purely as a plot device, the loss of time sends the plot into more relative chaos, the loss of days in M&D, sends Mason out of the Royal Astronomers circle, in IV it changes the whole course of the neo-noir investigation that seemed to be gaining more and more questions than answers.

If I was confusing on anything I can clarify here too.

Duuuuude whaaaaaa? *rips a huge marihuana bong hit*

daaaang

I'm half Brazilian also so this is a good reply.

Hey Flopinho, have you read any of Pynch's translated works? I'm just curious how they fare, I kind of want to try some in spanish.

Brazilians don't speak Spanish, also don't speak Portuguese yet, I'm American.

Oh my bad, have you read any of his books in BRAZILIAN?

Book is literally genre fiction, it was mildly entertaining though.

to give a half-hearted answer, the best brazilian novel I've read is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. read it in english obviously, anxiously awaiting the new translation.