Adam’s Comments (group member since Nov 25, 2015)

Adam’s comments from the Thomas Pynchon group.

I knew Gaddis did The Recognitions, my sentence structure was just blown to bits. i'm no Pynchon. :)

Alexander wrote: "Funny thing about "a guy Pynchon loved" . . .
I have not had great success with liking books recommended by authors I love.
Stone Junction by Jim Dodge and Zeroville by Steve Erickson, both recom..."

I don't like to dismiss authors outright, but everything I've read by Robbins is t r a s h (not even WASTE). The others, I haven't looked into.

Pynchon wrote forewords for Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina, and The Teaching of Don B., a collection of Barthelme odds-and-ends, and I think they're both worth a look. That introduction to Barthelme served as an introduction to one of my favorite authors.

He also blurbed DeLillo, not that he needed another feather in his cap.

I'm on the opposite side of the age conversation here: I'm trying to stretch the Pynchon catalog as far into old age as I get.

Since we ended up on Gass, I flipped through In The Heart of the Heart of the Country and loved it. I'd read scattered pieces here and there -- he seemed pretentious in a symposium with Grace Paley (a SAINT!), Walker Percy, and moderator Donald Barthelme (a guy Pynchon loved), and I'd caught a short piece about exile that was brilliant. He's talented, but Middle C and The Tunnel are just unspeakably dense.

And let's not even start on The Recognitions...

Benny wrote: "I've heard good things about Hideous Men, might give that a try.

To be honest the older I've gotten the less interested I am in tackling really difficult fiction. When it delivers it's one of the ..."

Hideous Men is a great place to start, in that case.

His books kind of rise in difficulty and experimentation as he goes along (in short fiction, at least): Girl / Curious has pretty simple stories, and then he starts to show his ambition in the novella.

Hideous Men is straightforward and contains some of his absolute best work (Forever Overhead floors me, every time).

Oblivion is where he starts to go a little gonzo; Incarnations of a Burned Child is one of the best and darkest things I've ever read, but the title story -- even though he's trying to get Something Particular across, gets really tedious. You have to fight for the payoff.

Getting back to Pynchon: I always feel like there's so much payoff in what he gives to you. Especially these days, when he's writing things so much less complicated, but still so Pynchonian. Inherent Vice has some of his best descriptions of landscape and some of his cutest character moments, and it's looked at as "lesser Pynchon."

Benny wrote: "I haven't read Infinite Jest but the recent film "The End of the Tour" has piqued my interest."

Jest is interesting because it's the work of a master, but it's also tremendously unfocused and maybe TOO experimental, if there is such a thing. There are portions of it that'll make you cry, they're so good, and there are portions you'll want to take out of your brain with a blowtorch.

If you want to get into Wallace (providing you haven't already), I'd recommend his short fiction -- which is deeply and shamefully underrated -- and his essays. If you're really into those, crack open Jest.

Benny wrote: "A friend was reading Mason and Dixon, he challenged me to read it as well. I knew nothing about Pynchon except he was a "recluse" and his work was difficult.

Well, it was an absolute pleasure to ..."

I do what I call The Mason and Dixon Challenge to people. I see how many words the given reader can get into the book before they give up.

I've given it kind of a broad flip, but man, that thing is not only dense, but the language is just brutal. There are beautiful portions of it, but it hasn't quite hit me hard enough to motivate me to a full read.

Reminds me of Infinite Jest in that way; any time Wallace tried to write dialect, my eyes rolled so hard they fell out of my head.

Pynchon's a little more deft and a lot less insulting, but a language barrier is a language barrier.

I was working at a bookstore, and I came across a copy of The Crying of Lot 49. I remembered friends from a comics messageboard talking about Pynchon, so the name rang a bell, but I knew nothing about the book or what I was getting myself into. I see this slim thing and I've got a five-hour flight in a few days, so I figure, what the hell.

I read it from front to back on the flight. Didn't have a single clue what happened. Knew I needed more, right then and there.

Now, he's one of my favorites of all time.

So: how did he hook you?