Reading Pynchon?

Like most I started by reading "The Crying of Lot 49" and to be perfectly honest I didn't get most of it, the bits I did get however I enjoyed highly. I now have a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" and the same thing seems to be happening again. Can I get some advice on how to elucidate Pynchon and make the ratio of enjoyment to confusion at least 50:50 if not better?

Attached: gravity's rainbow.jpg (251x201, 9K)

Stop trying to understand it completely, you'll just give yourself a headache. If you're totally lost just look a chapter guide or summary; if you see something that interest you do some independent research.

What said.
If you want get a guide and after each scene in the book you can check out the guide. Is english your first language though? I can see Pynchon being confusing for someone who isn't anglo.

Read V., it's more similar in style to Gravity's Rainbow than TCoL49.

All I can say to you is just go with it and hope that by the end you'll have gotten something out of it which for me is basically par for the course when it comes to Pynchon. You won't come away with a detailed knowledge of everything but that's just something you'll have to accept.

yeah native speaker here, just perhaps a bit out of my depth

Ok, try not to understand it all, I do that anyway but I'll try and accept it now lol. Thanks for the advice I will try and read a few pages now :)

>Like most I started by reading "The Crying of Lot 49" and to be perfectly honest I didn't get most of it,
How

Why are so many fiction readers hung up on understanding the content of a novel? What about aesthetics? Is literature a formally challenged medium?

It's just the people who can't appreciate aesthetics that are having troubles with the book

Aesthetics is often intertwined with meaning, making a gathered whole.
It can be difficult for some to really apprecite the aesthetic without some referential counterpoint, so to speak.
Bear in mind that to isolate pure aestheticism from meaning is much easier in occular arts than literature.

Why? An photographed object or a painted color often has more meaning baggage than a word.

>confusing for someone who isn't anglo.
Not true. I'm a poo(yeah, we read) and i fucking understood every word of it.

Not sure what Pynchon was saying in the book, but my vocabulary certainly was immaterial as regards intelligibility of the literal text etc.

No

Read Mason & Dixon or Against the Day. Those are the "real" Pynchon.

Gravity's Rainbow is good but it's mostly a tech demo. It's not really the soul of TP's writing.

Glad to know I'm correct.

>It can be difficult for some to really apprecite the aesthetic without some referential counterpoint
well, who's fault is that? ;)

lol okay

Disagree. Gravity’s Rainbow contains his densest, most interesting and profound ideas, as well as his best writing overall. IMO anyway.

Pynchon is schizophrenic and his novels are nonsense word salads.

t. didn't make it past the bananas

Attached: thomas-pynchon.jpg (300x300, 7K)

Just enjoy it for what it is, stop trying to "get" everything on a first read.

SNEED