What are Yea Forums's honest thoughts on Thomas Pynchon?

based

Ask me tomorrow, prepared Inherent Vice for a long bus ride

One of the greatest literary minds to exist, able to blend paranoia and humor in a way that's both thought provoking and imaginative. One of the last American authors worthy of entering the canon.
And Nabokov has nothing to do with Pynchon, motherfucker didn't even know who he was. And Pynchon's the better writer out of the two.

I think he's good but so does he and it gets a little annoying. I like his prose, some of his paragraphs are the most beautiful things I've ever read. But I think he likes his prose way more than I do. I feel like he could trim so much fat from his novels and they'd be undeniable classics. But that isnt possible, because I believe he absolutely loves every single fucking sentence he writes down.

I would say Pynchon and DFW are definitely worthy of entering the canon. I, personally, would like to make a case for Bret Easton Ellis as well

Based, what about Houellebecq?

Definitely a case for him.

Please never mention faggot wallace in the same sentence as Pynchon again, that's painful to see.

Bugman response, join your LOW IQ friends on there, that’s where you belong

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Anyone who talks shit about David, are always the biggest most insufferable faggots

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To clarify, the straw that broke the camels back on faggot wallace for me was his failed attempt at describing the brockengespenst. He directly borrowed from Pynchon to try to seem intelligent, and completely missed the point. A recurring theme in all of his work. But please, post some more twitter and ad-hominem, you seem like the perfect dfw fan

You’ve read his entire work? Every single word he’s ever written?, yes I sure am.

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Nope, his short stories make me want to die.
I read IJ and realized I hated the fag. So I tried his essays, consider the lobster and the other one, and both were garbage. So I tried PK, and that too was literary fraud.
Please, go read a real author instead of shitting up this thread with your clearly superior intellect

Cringe Satanic Trips from a guy who didn't consider the lobster

Who do you consider to be real authors?

It doesn't matter, just be able to defend their work beyond
hurrr you didnt read it
durrr you dont understand it
for fucks sake, you insufferable cunts make king look like a god

>Real Author

Mate stop you’re embarrassing yourself

In order to have an unbiased take on something, you have to be an expert on what you’re talking about, I know you know this, because you’re not stupid, you’re just angry. Take it easy mate

He's definitely a very clever and intelligent writer, and I admire his ability to unite the low-brow and the high-brow, the literary and the scientific, the past and the present, etc. All the books of his I've read feel like they've got some nebulous central idea behind them that Pynchon never states outright, but instead alludes to through an impossibly convoluted web of metaphors and themes that all feel like they might boil down to the same thing. He somehow manages to feel like he's pulling ideas out of thin air and repeating himself at the same time.
I don't really know what to think about him. I've read and enjoyed his first three books, and would like to read the rest at some point. In my more cynical moments it feels like all his work is just a complicated way of justifying the 60s counter-culture and its glorification of doing drugs, having weird sex, and acting out in public, but even then I can't deny that the way he gets to that conclusion is fascinating and incredibly entertaining.

>I recently watched Under the Silver Lake and it felt like Lot 49's unofficial movie adaptation.
Great movie, those are my thoughts on it exactly.

>It doesn't matter
It does considering you used these real authors as an argument in your favor
>you insufferable cunts
The only one that is being insufferable is you. You could have calmly explained why you don't like DFW but instead you got angry and just called things garbage without really giving an explanation. We might have agreed on some of your complaints.

You summed it up pretty well and yet i can't shake the feeling that Pynchon is onto something. I am sure he is deeper than any of us can fathom. I mean surely....the guy's a literal encyclopaedic powerhouse. He definitely has something deep to say. I hope some professor out there figures it out before i die.

Hi, Thomas Pynchon here, also known as The Guy who wrote at least 3 really long books that aren’t worth reading. When I’m not walking around New York City with my shithead great grand nephew buying him the latest V-Box or whatever (back in my day, we had to wait four weeks for Trystero to deliver a Captain Racism doll and we’d have to use nothing but our imagination to have fun with it (That and of course the three variations of the n-word that would play when you squeezed his amputated legs (By the n-word I meant Nigger))).
Anyway, like you said, when I’m not wasting my fortune from my very successful writing career on my ungrateful family or smoking a Big Fat Joint in my bachelor pad, you like to reminisce on when I, Thomas Pynchon, became an anarcho primitivist for a week. It all started when you ran into this guy, Teddy Something, at the University of Michigan in the late 60s. you was trying to score some acid off of some of the cooler kids, when you quite literally ran into this Ted cat.
“My papers!”
“Let me help you with that”, you offered, noticing the complex equations and symbols scrawled across the sheets, “I really am sorry. you was looking for some cool kids to buy drugs off, but it's clear you are a math nerd and therefore not useful to me. Although, you am really trying to get some mathy stuff into my next novel, that would really have the critics going bananas...”
“I don’t have time for this. Please just hand me those papers.”
“Now hold on, what's this? These aren’t standard nerd equations.”
With my background as an engineer at the yoyo factory, you was able to tell that Teddy here was planning on building a bomb.
“You know, if you write me a couple of math jokes for my novel, I’m willing to forget everything you just saw here.”
“*sigh* How about send you them in the mail when you have some more time.”
“It’s a deal!”, you outstretched my hand and BZZT zapped him with a classic buzzer hidden in my palm. “Haha, got ya. This baby is the most powerful buzzer you can get!”
He walked grumpily away.
“What’s the matter, you don’t like new technology?” I shouted.

Cute punchline; I smirked.

Absolutely brilliant, please write more

Someone please post the gong pasta

only read V and the crying of lot 49, both were amazing and lived up to the hype

>they call it infinite jest because it takes forever to read and the joke is on you that you read that long ass bullshit

Lmao

Even Suttree and No country for old men?

No Country for Old Men was the only other one I kind of liked.

i don't get it
what's so great?

He's my favorite author

Only read the crying of lot 49 and it was ok but didn't make me want to read anything else from him

A truly great writer. Gravity’s Rainbow is genuinely one of the most impressive, memorable, and haunting books I’ve ever read.

My personal ranking of his work, favorite to least:

Gravity’s Rainbow > Mason and Dixon > Vineland > V > Against the Day > Crying of Lot 49 > Bleeding Edge > Inherent Vice

I don't have any because I can't fucking read him.

Based

What makes Inherent Vice your least favorite?

Some guy was giving out copies of lot 49 and telling everyone how long he had been on Yea Forums for.

I read it and had a seizure when I read the last sentence
And then I coomed

>I personally prefer some humanity tied to everything
I don't get the "Pynchon is cold and inhuman" meme (and yes, I do believe it is literally a meme à la Dawkins). Roger Mexico and Jessica, Pökler and his daughter, Slothrop's gnawing fears for Mucker-Maffick or Bianca. I feel like if you miss the humanity in these you're either too distracted by the wackiness or you want a sentimental tone of writing to spell things out for you.

gravity's rainbow IS actually one of the greatest works of the 20th century. insurmountably good

When was this?

McCarthy?

Yeah, I can see the case for him

This spring

Earlier this year.

I don't think he's glorifying the counterculture so much as explaining what it's goals were and why it failed. Yes, there were a ton of retarded hippies, but there was also the civil rights movement. Pynchon points out how dumb and lazy leftists can be, but he also explains the necessity of fighting the war against fascism, and every now and then, the left can win.

The important part is that he values forgiveness (see the end of Inherent Vice and Vineland) which is something the counterculture needs to incorporate if the left is to make any headway in the mid 21st century.

Looks kinda like Camus

Pretty much exactly how I feel but I don't get the same feeling from Tolstoy or DFW.

Like the other mentioned, he pokes a lot of fun at the counter culture, like “change your hair change your life”, how too much of it was aimless youth looking for an excuse to do drugs and have irresponsible sex the with some higher mission in mind, while it all was really just vanity and nihilistic confusion

Yeah, you're probably right. "The Whole Sick Crew" in V. was a pretty obvious parody/criticism of the counterculture, and while I haven't read anything past GR, I can see it being a major theme in his later works.
My misgivings came from his depiction of the "counterforce" in the last parts of GR. Immediately after finishing the book I got the impression that Pynchon was presenting them as an unequivocal force for good that would defeat the System through goofs, gags, rambunctious behavior, etc. The more I think about it, though, the more simplistic this interpretation sounds.

I haven't read it but I noticed this too. I predict Yea Forums contrarians will now realize that shitting on DFW is now reddit and stop it

No, DFW is complete dogshit.
Try again.

I like his books, they are enjoyable to read.

>All this DFW discussion in a Pynch thread
Proof that the David Foster Wallace Internet Defense Force is Yea Forums kanker.

Just reading V for the first time, the faustos confession chapter was hard fucking going and I'm not sure why profane just helped stencil steal the dentists teeth.

Only have a couple of chapters to go

Uh...it’s implied the Counterforce gets bought out by Them and fails miserably at achieving much of anything. The book also ends with the world/reality being destroyed. I don’t really see how you came up with this interpretation.

I've liked what I've read. I feel like I did myself a disservice when I read Gravity's Rainbow a couple months ago, I sort of rushed my way through the last 150+ pages just to finish it, which I now regret. When I eventually reread it, which who knows could be a decade from now, I'll be certain to take my time with it.

Why so much hate for Inherent Vice? It was less ambitious than GR, sure, but it still had that trademark paranoia and captured the End of the Seventies well.

>I don't get the "Pynchon is cold and inhuman" meme
There's a certain sort of person -- picture "a typical woman" -- that is not very intelligent or talented who prides themself on being extremely "empathetic" or "having a high emotional intelligence". In reality they are dumb and solipsistic; their "empathy" is just projection and they are totally incapable of fathoming anything outside their own blinkered existence.

These people find Pynchon impossible to read compared to their usual fare and blame it on his being "inhuman" i.e. not like them. They're correct.

>I personally prefer some humanity tied to everything.
Pynchon is one of the most humane authors in my opinion. How can you even say that? Did you not read anything, you moron?

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO FEELS PYNCHON IS A VERY SENSITIVE WRITER? ESPECIALLY OF FEMALES? HE FUCKING LOVES HIS WOMEN. NO OTHER AUTHOR TREATS WOMEN WITH SO MUCH AFFECTION AND CARE.

>those girls in M&D
>Oedipa Maas
>Maxine Tarnow
>Shasta Fay
>FUCKING V (with that diamond in her belly button and whatnot)

Massive pinecone fan checking in, have read all of the books and I frequently put IV towards the bottom of the list. Will also preface by saying the California Stoner popcorn are generally my least favorites, I definitely prefer tome pinecone.
My main 'issue' with it is the 'lack' of layered prose/theme. Most of pinecone's work operates on several levels, moving from metaphoric to spiritual to physical in a way that becomes entrancing. This doesn't really get to happen in the popcorn books since the plot is being driven so heavily. Definitely not a bad thing, just the reason I enjoy them a bit less. Still miles above almost every other author to have ever walked the earth.
and great disection on the 'why does pynchon feel cold' argument, definitely agree with your points

You'll come around

Better quill than teeth for sure.

Same. And on top of your examples from Gravity’s Rainbow, I’d add the entirety of Mason and Dixon. The whole thing’s a cup of hot cocoa.

>struggle with passages about shit I can't even begin to comprehend with my tiny brain
>laugh at the poop

My enjoyment seems to be outweighing the frustration that comes from being retarded

>it’s implied the Counterforce gets bought out by Them
Can you elaborate? Just what is the Counterforce, anyways? I'm kind of in the same boat as , the last ~100 pages were a struggle.

His family is from New England - could it be that he is one of the cursed offspring of the Pyncheon line as narrated in The House of the Seven Gables?

yes

Unironically my favorite author

Am I the only one that gets serious Puritan vibes off Pynchon? And I don’t mean Puritan in the popular sense, there’s lots of hot fucking in his books.
But his equation of sodomy with death in Gravity’s Rainbow, for example, comes straight out of colonial Massachusetts.

>His earliest American ancestor, William Pynchon, emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, then became the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1636, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil.

>I'm not sure why [this character did this thing].
Welcome to Pynchland, we hope you enjoy your stay.

Please don't spoil non-spoilers. People may miss out on what you have to say thinking it's a spoiler.

He literally is.

>Winthrop fleet
>throp

Just finished V and I don't understand. Enjoyed reading it though

I want to read Pynchon's entire bibliography in order to understand the craft of his writing. Read V, TCoL49, and Slow Learner; didn't care too much for the latter ones, and I'm about to finish my second read of GR.
Gravity's Rainbow has absolutely blown me away. The first time through was basically what said about V; felt like I didn't retain any of it, but thoroughly enjoyed the writing. The second read cemented GR as one of my all time favorite novels. So much so, I've been nervous about continuing through the rest of his work. I have Vineland lined up, and actually feel excited about getting to M&D, but everything after that gets a lot of mixed criticism. AtD is fucking long, and I don't want to be disappointed by it once I get there, and end up not even bothering with the rest of his works.

bump

Like that other user said, even a bad pynchon book is still much better than your average good book.

Go back to Inchŏn, Pynchon

Every time

Well, even though TCoL49 wasn't my favorite book, I have to agree with you. You've convinced me.

Vineland is good, better than V and Bleeding Edge certainly, just stagnant and weird in the middle third of the book. Pynchon mastered the long, flowing sentence in Vineland. Wasn't much of that in GR, but plenty of it and better applications of it in AtD.

That makes me feel a lot better. AtD is intimidating; Vineland just gets so many mixed views, but it's short enough for me to give it a try. Almost 2,000 pages of Pynchon is scary....

He's already part of the canon according to Bloom.

Yeah but Bloom is retarded

>reading GR
>It's another page-long list of items
What am I supposed to do here? Is there deep symbolism behind every item, or is it just for immersion?

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Worse, he's a jew.

What page?

Unreadable.

Viceland got mixed reviews because people were dissatisfied with its smaller scope after GR. 20 years is a long time so it's only natural that it would warrant a reaction like this. But dont put down the book so soon. This is one of Pynchon's more humane works. That's not to say that the ones before this weren't but this one is a bit softer on its characters. There is warmth here and it'll help as a primer from M&D. No doubt Pinecone wrote this one to take the edge off of M&D (which is a fairly demanding work to write)

It really depends on what part you're on. The candy drill, for instance, is generally considered to be hyper symbolic. The essays in the back, however, are considered so obfiscated even pynch doesn't remember what he was talking about in a few of them

Read Bleeding Edge, fun book, not meant to be taken too seriously and it pokes fun (and at the same time fuel it) of paranoia
Really humbling his take of 9/11.
Bought V., will start reading it in a few days

>20 years is a long time so it's only natural that it would warrant a reaction like this.
That was the impression I got. It's almost a good thing I get to read his works today, rather than when they were originally released. M&D is actually the book I'm most excited for.

Sometimes he's right and this is the case here.

He a cute, A BIG CUTE
And I'll fucking fight anyone that disagrees
also, I've read GR like three times and I still don't get the lightbulb jesus essay, any other pinecone fans want to throw me a bone?

This bit, I’m pretty sure, was about the 60’s.
>Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern. He learns how to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in homes, in factories and out in the streets. Each has something to tell him. The pattern gathers in his soul (Seele, as the core of the earlier carbon filament was known in Germany), and the grander and clearer it grows, the more desperate Byron gets. Someday he will know everything, and still be as impotent as before. His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the world seem impossible now—the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out in the line. Prophets traditionally don’t last long—they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. But on Byron has been visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything. No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it…

there hasnt been a better novelist since to my knowledge, though tcol49 is disgustingly overrated

The Phoebus cartel was real, and its largely Pynchon riffing off of that

Now that you've said it, it reeks of the 60s. Thank you very much for the input.
I was putting too much emphasis on the religious allusion, I think. Can't believe I overlooked something that's so common in the rest of his work

But he hates that book. I like it because it proves to me that pynchon can tell GR as a short forum story and isn't just hiding behind lots of big words.

TCoL49 was a revelation to read as a high school teenager getting into literature. I always wanted to tackle his bigger books but I didn't have the stamina etc. to get through them so I read Bleeding Edge and Inherent Vice which I enjoyed but not as much as TCoL49. Finally I went on a vacation to The Philippines and I read through Gravity's Rainbow. It was the least good of the ones I finished. I was disappointed. I don't read for the plot but I still found myself thinking it could've been better. The third part of that book (the largest part) was such a downgrade from the rest of it. I don't feel excited to read his other books now.

Porky Pig you mean

It’s the laziest interpretation when it comes to Pynchon, but this one’s pretty blatant.

Who’s the Marvin the Martian of literature?

Pynchon's not very hard he just uses fancy words

It's throughout, really. Not necessarily literally an entire page but often when he describes a scene he lists objects. Here's one I read yesterday.

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oh yeah in this case I guess it's people not "objects" but yeah sorry for pedantry

Read Gravity's Rainbow

That's a prime example of him using it for immersion. He's talking about a room full of pinball machines, they are by definition noisy.

im aware he hates it and i can see why

But it's so zippy

It’s a hoot and holler.

ah ok. Part of me still wonders if there isn't some significance behind things. like why exactly are they "comic-book" dogs cats and mice, why does he call attention to the chef hats, why are they "ten-in-one" freaks (and is 10% of the population really that freakish?)?

"Ten-in-one" probably means "ten people in the body of a single person," multiple limbs, heads, etc.

...now that's freakish. Yeah, I read it as "one-in-ten" didn't I?

>The second read cemented GR as one of my all time favorite novels.
why?

that page is pure autism ....what's the point here?

It highlights the hopelessness that comes with realizing no matter what you do, no matter how many revolutionary ideas you come up with and how hard you try, you aren’t beating the system. You aren’t even touching it (unless perhaps guided by spirits, as Pensiero is influenced by a certain lightbulb powered by a man who hears a harmonica played by a familiar specter...)

I've got GR, MaD and AtD ready to go, can I get some power rankings to help me choose which one to do first. I'm tempted to leave MaD to last as it's actually the one I'm looking forward to most

I read the first half of AtD as a primer for GR. It's his easiest tomb, but it's long as fuck

Maxine was honestly the perfect jewess mom, a complete down to earth character. The footjob scene cemented her as the perfect middle aged housewive fantasy of the last century.

Fully agree. He writes 'whole' women that feel incredibly real.

>No use or 'sez'
>No song

Like I'm meant to believe this is actually Tom

This

This copypasta changed my life.

>Prophets traditionally don’t last long—they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back.
Remember how Dylan was an enormous countercultural icon in New York while Pynchon was living there?
What happened to him around 1966 that took the political edge away from his music?
Gravity's Rainbow is somewhat autobiographical, in the most horrifying ways

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>DFW
nah

His frequent use of lists is actually really genius. By providing the physical objects, he expects the reads to try and piece together a picture from disparate information the same way a paranoiac does.

To me, Gravity's Rainbow full of too much sex and slapstick... maybe not too much, but too gratuitous for it to not feel cartoonish and forced. That's why he seems like less of a humane writer in my eyes, because his characters seem more like parody-for-the-sake-of-understanding than actual people.

idiot

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no need to continue replying, you've already btfo'd yourself :)

Pynchon is the quintessential TV-raised Boomer writer.

>inb4 not technically a Boomer
Fuck off.

Pynchon is re-creating cartoons and TV shows in his writing and interweaving it with the jewish-produced, hyper-sexualized, transgressive 60s culture he was most influenced by.

shut up poltard, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

>all lower case
>command clause followed by a comma splice and a disparagement
Your firmware needs an update

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yep, retarded

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It's like Yea Forums. You can enjoy the shitposts and the Quality Posts.

This is so oddly accurate I may have to go for another re-read just to read it in user schizo voice

His books are meaningless retarded shit that read like a fucking episode of family guy.

t. have read most his novels

>his failed attempt at describing the brockengespenst. He directly borrowed from Pynchon
This appears in other literature, notably Goethe, so he didn’t necessarily take from Pynchon

holy shit I never thought of it that way

>family guy
*Looney Tunes

Yes, but dfw was asked about this exact thing and he credited it to his having read GR

Sure

Isn't this that perfectly sane author who writes schizophrenic and intentionally broken symbolism into his books, in order to mock the human desire to interpret?

Yeah he did it to shine a light on paranoia and over-interpretation, but in doing that he really is a long-winded waste of time.

Most of his symbolism could be interpreted by your average high school English teacher, user. He spells out a lot of them in Gravity’s Rainbow (double-integrals, parabolas, boners, etc.)

So, so, so many boners

>mock the human desire to interpret
interesting take
wanna elaborate?

top 100 novelists of all time

Does nothing for me. I find him empty and inert

I looked up an excerpt from Gravity's Rainbow and really liked it. That's my entire opinion of his work.

Read the first five pages of gravity's rainbow and couldn't stand the writing style. Not for me.

a favorite. full and mobile.

Do you feel like it's ok to read a translation of GR, or will I be losing to much?

I mean, I read Infinite Jest in Portuguese and absolutely loved, and after reading it in English as well, I fell like the translation was perfectly adequate. But Ulysses is one I will probably only read in English, since much will be lost in translation.

Pic related, the Portuguese translation I'm thinking about getting.

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Hope you bought a good edition. I remember the Harper Perennial black-white-green one having some pretty bad typographical mistakes when I dipped into it once before. Like Penguin Deluxe-levels of bad.

oh baby

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FUCK ME THAT'S FUCKING AWESOME

Why are Japanese covers so good? I saw a 2666 cover here a while back and it was b'ful.

i think more would be lost in infinite jest desu.
so if you didn't mind that, you'll be fine.

I don't think it would be a hard book to translate, aside from colloquialisms like "sez" and references to American pop culture you're probably already familiar with.
Still, a translation can't compete with the original. If your English is good enough for Ulysses, you shouldn't have any problem with GR.

>Pynchon is re-creating cartoons and TV shows in his writing and interweaving it with the jewish-produced, hyper-sexualized, transgressive 60s culture he was most influenced by.
>full of too much sex and slapstick... maybe not too much, but too gratuitous for it to not feel cartoonish and forced. That's why he seems like less of a humane writer in my eyes, because his characters seem more like parody-for-the-sake-of-understanding than actual people.

These are accurate critiques, but he does these things very artfully and with purpose.

>Why are Japanese covers so good
Japan, ironically considering the average opinion on Asians among certain close-minded groups, has yet to lose its soul.

The only real problem is that Pynchon makes heavy use dialect to establish place and so the "britishness" of book one which is accomplished in part by exploiting differences between American and British English, is dulled somewhat. Probably the worst thing I can think of and I suppose it wouldn't really matter if you aren't a native English speaker anyway

You could probably use some other version of that, For example there are many different versions of French which could very roughly correspond to a British-American dichotomy, or at least imply the same sort of thing.

>Implying japs have souls.

In reality, Japan is one of the most soul-crushing societies on earth.

both good theories based on hours of anime experience..well done

I read manga and play video games too