V

Finished this yesterday Veeky Forums June 10th: What a strange coincidence... and what a ride it was!

Feel free to discuss anything, but these are my questions:

1. Obligatory: What was Vhiessu then? Surely not a Rosicrucian utopia under the Arctic? Yet Fairing seemed to be attempting to create his own Vhiessu under New York, perhaps reading Augustine's City of God a little too literally
2. Who narrates the ending? Stencil fils? He narrated all the others, barring Fausto's Confessions, Is this why there's that line, "His father, ha."? If so what will Stencil do knowing that she had nothing to do with his father's demise?

Thomas Pynchon is the dumbest fucking "writer" to ever exist, he's just not intelligent. I know people who study philosophy, history, sciences, physics, all of them think he's a fucking charlatan, the only people who idolise him are shitty Lit majors.

>my undergrad friend think pynchon is a charlatan
lol

Ayy June tenth was my birthday!

>I know people who study philosophy, history, sciences, physics

wow
very impressive

I don't think he's shit, but I do think he's overrated. I pefer DeLillo and Carver when it comes to his contemporaries.

>Carver
>"no tricks for the reader, please"

Yeah right. Enjoy your Arcadian, stultifying, constrained, basic, mirthless prose. I enjoy some stimulation of my mind when reading something, otherwise why not just listen to music and feel like killing yourself for no reason at all. Banal pathos by itself is pretty mediocre to me. You'll end up like Woody Allen if you pose such restrictions on your style. Carver is the one overrated mate. Pynchon is next to God up on the ceiling of nightly wonders.

Is that the new vlone shirt?

That's okay if you're not stimulated by Carver. I am. I find his deliberate absence of substance chilling and immediately atmospheric. His allusions to violence are much more effective and unnerving than the cinematic detail you'd find in other works.

He got his talents direcrly from Chekhov, and both were perfect examples in displaying the short story as how it's often characterized: "the distillation of an essence." Where you see his voice as being banal, I see it as delicate and powerful because of that.

Not that I don't enjoy aesthetics. I love Pynchon's prose. I'm just not interested in authors who are concerned with overt and worldy themes. I prefer the banal and simple lives he wtites about.

>Arcadian
>stultifying
>mirthless
Fuck off Nabokov. Nobody's impressed with your ostentatious vocabulary. ok the third one isn't bad but paired with the others it completes the trend.

Also you need to learn to read into the text, not just mull around the surface of it. Carver is all subtext, so every word is very carefully chosen. Carver's great in that he doesn't need his subtleties to strut themselves across the page like a whore. Such displays may catch your attention but they're empty peacocking and it impresses only pseuds.

I want to read some Pinecone, what should I go for?

I see Veeky Forums fellating Gravity's Rainbow on the reg, is it a good place to start?

The last chapter is narrated by Stencil's father, I always tought that line meant he wasn't his father, but Veronica was his mother

I thought that too, but the one thing that changed my mind was that Stencil told that song which made fun of Stencil fils talking in the 3rd person. I wondered if the "his father, ha" was a sort of disappointment and resignation with his father for that.

Also if the father narrates the ending chapter (which I'm not completely discounting) who narrates the final paragraph?

I never tought it could be Stencil just because he searches for who killed his father throughout all the book and in the end in was nature/chance, so him not knowing that (by not narrating the chapter) just made it ironic and a bit sad to me
Also Pynchon changing the narrator isn't so strange, although I don't remember him doing it a lot in V., where in GR he jumps from one character to another to himself
Sorry for my English, I hope I was clear

Also, if I remember correctly, the line you quoted comes after Stencil thinks about Victoria fucking half of Europe, so he can't know for sure if he's his father

Quite clear, and I like the reading, but I almost wonder that Stencil wouldn't be satisfied that the water spout was chance (whether it was or not). It is Evan Godolphin who sees him off for the last time, and Evan is associated with things outside of reality (like Vheissu). Even if Vheissu is a complete fantasy, I'm sure Stencil fils wouldn't see this as the end

Yeah that's one of the things that bothered me about the book and I can't reallly grasp, Stencil just going away from Malta when he has truth almost in his hands
Also about Veisshu, I should reread some passages like the spider monkey in the Arctic, because it's intriguing but never really explained, to simply say it's real would be too simple

>I know people
>people in modern western education

Yup... what a shit opinion.
You know dickheads to cling to watered down B.S.

>Thinking that's ostentatious

Get out of here, brainlet.

HAHA You secretly would choose Nabokov or Pynchon or Gaddis and definitely Melville over Carver any day of this summer. Wanna bet?

I find myself agreeing with you to a large extent. I wish i could read Chekhov in Russian to see his 'essence'.

What's Pynchon's best work?

Mason and Dixon

It's a toss up for me between Against the Day and M&D. Read both, user. They're extraordinary human achievements.