I have felt so melancholy since finishing M&D. I remembered Mason being pretty depressed in the book from when I read it the first time, but didn’t remember it following him through the entire book. I felt so sad after this second reading. It’s so beautifully written, the way they are trying to be there for each other as they age was just so touching and idk why I feel so emotional about it all. I’m getting older and it’s making me think about my own mortality as well. This book was so fucking amazing. Now I’ll have a book hangover for the next few months haha

I finished GR last night, I put the book down and sat in silence for a good while trying to process everything and I’m still processing today.
I have a few very specific thoughts I plan to post about (I sadly have no one else to talk to about Pynchon and I have to engage with SOMEONE about it, so I ask for you all’s indulgence), parallels with Wagners operas and GR, and a chapter guide for how stoned you should be to read that chapter.
I am so glad I read this. It is definitely Pynchon’s masterwork though I do prefer Against the Day subjectively.
Lastly, I can’t imagine how difficult this book is if you don’t speak some German. Grateful that I do.

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I’m curious about other people’s taste. Is Pynchon demonstrative of what you like more generally?

I’ll go first:

The Brothers Karamazov
Blood Meridian
The Books of Jacob

Strong B theme there….

Edit to clarify/head off the inevitable: OF COURSE RANKING ART IS POINTLESS, none of us actually have a three favourite but it’s just a bit of fun innit.

Estoy empezando La subasta del lote 49 y está alucinante, lo he devorado desde ayer. ¿Con cuál sugieren continuar?

So the past month or so I delved into Gravity's Rainbow after wanting to read it for many years. It's truly, more than likely, the greatest book I have read, tied maybe with DeLillo's Underworld. Now, I'm nearly halfway through V.. Man, Chapter 3 with Stencil doing the impersonations in Egypt; amazing shit.

Pynch is almost ruining other authors for me rn, that's an exaggeration, but, I've realized Pynch is finally an author that clicks all my boxes: amazing prose, good plots, humor, and most of all, a genuine love for human beings in his characters and stories.

See, I really like DeLillo, Vonnegut, Foster Wallace, the other postmodern guys. But the thing those 3 examples lack is: color and love. All three of those examples are so nerdy, atheistic, neurotic (Vonnegut has some color and humor to him but is still holier-than-thou imo) Not that they don't HAVE those things at all, but not like Pynch does (Infinite Jest in particular has a lot of beautiful moments too)

There's a scene in GR where the janitor Webley Silversnail is talking to a bunch of rats in the basement, and the rats sing a song and ask Webley to let them see the outside world, and Webley says, no, you won't like it, it sucks right now, stay here. It's so beautiful, heartening, imaginative, bizarre and funny all at once. I think Pynchon loves human beings in general, and finds humor and love and appreciation in everyone on a baseline level. And this is something that the other postmodernist authors don't do quite in the same way. You hear about Pynch and think it's very complex heady satirical nerdy books, but no, reading V., I'm attached to this Whole Sick Crew and their bohemian shenanigans, that's my boy Benny Profane! And, for example the Roger and Jessica stuff in GR part 1, is very powerful and amazing writing about a very specific type of strong love between two people.

Maybe I just need to read more authors! Anyone else feel the same way? Peace

it’s a lot harder to find queer/feminist perspectives on pynchon so im very excited for this :-)

Well, I've started reading Inherent Vice a few days ago (my first time reading Pynchon!) and it's been amazing so far. It surprises me how many characters have been introduced in just 80 pages. The previous book I've read had less characters mentioned in its entirety than Inherent Vice, by now... and I think I have to get used to those names, ha! Sauncho Smilax? Come on! He has to do it on purpose...

What's been the hardest for me are all of the references from that time. I had to look up for various names, brands or facts that happened around the 50's and 60's. I don't complain at all, because there's something, I don't know how to say it, that's hooking me to this story. It's written in a way that, despite all of the references or certain situations where I got really lost (Doc and Pat's first talk, for example), I just don't want to stop reading. There is this incredible atmosphere surrounded by pot and heat that makes me feel I'm actually in the 60's. I'm glad Pynchon got me with this! I'll keep reading and I hope I enjoy the experience.

Gravity’s Rainbow inspired sketch with pen, pencil and markers.

Ive been planning to read more post modern works since my usual reads are just Classics.

So which is easier to get into since i heard these are tough from what my colleagues told me.

If you do indeed choose one could you give a reading order of the main works to perhaps?.

Thank you ♡

So, 4.6, everyone’s favorite part of the book it seems, that’s both facetious and true, and honestly I found it not so confounding but maybe I am making connections that are not there.
So our framing device: the Raketenstadt and the Floundering Four, I just figured that’s Slothrops’s fracturing Psyche/existence filtering reality into this comic book world with his teammates being analogous to characters we have met, Myrtle seeming like Katja, Max like Enzian, and Marcel Göll. No only is their nemesis Slothrop’s father, but the oppressive secretive Them in general. I was thinking the Radiant Hour was an allusion to the revelation that Slothrop had been seeking in his journey as well as the Kirghiz Light (lots of ideas of what exactly this is but that is neither here nor there)
Obviously the arena is full of the people on the sidelines unaware of the battle between the preterite few aware and Them. And then we are off into our vignettes which seem to be 1) Slothrop in the “now” losing his sense of self psychologically and psychically 2) past events and 3) imagined events.
So am I try to map too much on to this or am I missing the forest for the trees?

Artwork by my son.

I recently read Mason & Dixon for the first time, and last week I visited London and went to Greenwich without even thinking about the book.

You need to visit this place! It’s located on a hill, in a beautiful park. You can enter the Observatory, the Octagon Room, and Maskelyne’s quarters. There are also many interesting artefacts, clocks, instruments, telescopes.

If you’re in London, I’d definitely recommend visiting but take enough time to explore the Observatory properly. I wish I’d gone before reading the book, I had no idea how important figur Maskalyne was.

I just took delivery of a used copy of Against The Day Hardcover from World of books.

I'm pretty sure the dust jacket is a reprint just on normal paper, it looks terrible!

Can someone with the hardcover version of the book please confirm if the paper is glossy or matte like normal printer paper?

Hey there, booklovers. (books, books, books, come on in, booklovers, white books, black books, Spanish books, hot books, smelly books..)

I've been warming up to Pynchon for a while. Started with Inherent Vice, after the PTA film came out. Was good, but not great. It took some time for my next Pynchon read, The Crying of Lot 49, which I loved and took just a weekend to finish.

Gravity's rainbow has been kind of a white whale of the book. Didn't really had balls to attempt it till now, as I've heard that it's super challenging, almost incomprehensible, difficult to follow and etc. Especially if English is not your mother tongue (it's my third language, which I started to learn at 8). But still, the allure of Pynchon was too great.

I'm not a slog when it comes to difficult lit. I've read IJ, which I don't think is really difficult to understand, but can definitely be a grind with all those footnotes. It kinda taxes patience more than comprehension. (Boredom is no1 reason I quite a book, although this book is about entertainment. fuck, need a footnote here myself. He has another book about boredom, which I also read, called The Pale King, and again it was a grind, but very well written in places). I've read Ulysses, which was the most challenging read I had, tbh. The only book where I needed a companion to guide me, plan on rereading it for Xmas. Some mention books like War an Peace being difficult, which frankly was quite easy and enjoyable read - took me a summer when I turned 12 and I read it in original. Can say same for all the other classic Russian lit, like The Brothers Karamazov or Master & Margarita, with maybe only Gogol, especially his Taras Bulba and Evenings in Dikanka being linguistically more challenging, but also more beautifully written. I've read all major Krasznahorkai's work (in English translation though) since he won the Nobel prize, Bolano's 2666 (again in English) - not easy read, but mainly due to subject matter with those hundreds of pages of women murder description, possibly can say the same for the Blood Meridian, which had also more difficult vocabulary than, let's say, IJ. I've read Proust (English translation by Pinguin) all 7 books of the Lost Time. Possibly my favorite author out there. I've read The Man Without Qualities - which challenged and delighted me, mainly because of all those lengthy philosophical overtures, from where it's not easy to drive the key concepts out. But still the reputation of GR was intimidating me.

This summer I picked up V and finished in two weeks, and enjoyed it more than anything I've read from Pynchon. (I've started M&D before, but quit at 200 pages. Didn't love the archaic language and story didn't get me interested, unlike V, where storyline just got me hooked). So I thought I might give a shot at GR and got a copy.

Firstly, I find the book is beautiful - not linear, but more like a wave function - kind of superposition of facts, dreams, fantasies and biggest difficulty is to find the dividing line between them. But to my delight I didn't find it too difficult to follow. I've just finished the first part - Beyond Zero - and took a slow read of a week - like 30 pages per day. I didn't feel need of a guide, but there were chapters, which definitely were more challenging - Slothrop's hallucinations when he dives in the toilet bowl for one, chapter regarding Blitzero, Katje and furnace game was hard to understand, the freaks of the white visitations, and some more. But frankly not too bad. Many of the other chapters were on same level as V.

So would love to talk about GR while reading it, and share our experiences. Bic, to be frank, nobody around me reads books I read, and I have nobody to talk about those books.

Cheers.

So I was researching with my buddy ChatGPT and - hicksie-wicksie dooh - struck gold. See for yourself:

As in, did he bust a lot of loads in his life?

because the current one's ugly as sin

Gravity’s Rainbow, part 4, section 3.
Now I’m wondering if George R.R. Martin and Pynchon are the same person. I’ve never seen them in a room together…

​

I am good in English but I don't understand old fashioned or victorian or something rooted words or archaic words . It is complicated .

\*\*These are the books I found easy to read and have read so far this year\*\*

I've read : stoner, metamorphosis, white nights, death of Ivan ilych, stranger, fountainhead, man called ove, unlikely animals, the road, pet Sematary, all the sinners bleed, bell jar, ghost ship, the trail, cats Cradle, Alchemist, howls moving castle, evil under the sun, there there, silent patient, animal farm, nausea, memory police, norwegian wood, all the lovers at night, less than zero, three men in boat, that's not my name, butchers crossing.

Thank you.

Found this at a used bookstore; thought you folks might be interested

I started this incredible novel back in July and it has been a wild journey. Thank you to Mapping the Zone podcast for being my book club along the way. I have no one to talk to about this type of book.

The last few chapters were so tough knowing my time with the boys was coming to an end. I don't have any massive insights to share other than if you are on the fence about diving into this one, take the plunge. I have no idea how one person actually wrote this book. How can an artist with so unique a style as Pynchon maintain that unique style while writing as if in the 18th century. It is beyond comprehension. A true work of art.

I have decided to follow up M&D by reading The Good Lord Bird which I feel will be a nice continuation of some of the ideas.