Jim’s Comments (group member since Sep 14, 2009)

Jim’s comments from the Thomas Pynchon group.

If you know what little there is to know about Pynchon, he lived in the L.A. beach town that he calls Gordita Beach in Inherent and Vineland and it's also where he wrote much of Gravity's Rainbow. It's a place he's fond of and sentimental about. That's enough for me.

I listened to the audio book of Inherent Vice for my second "reading" and while the frame of the narrative is more compact those wild wonderful sentences are Pynchon's. If it means ensuring the perpetuity of his legacy, I hope he publishes more books in this vein.

If you go a little deeper into the catalog you'll find a very brief excerpt, which concludes with "ambush by rolling aluminum."

I don't see much point in "defending" where a book sits on my personal ranking system, but I will say that my estimation of Vineland improved considerably after I read it a second time.

Thanks, Phillip! I've never read City of Quartz but its been on my list for a while.

I posted some notes about Gordita Beach in my review of Inherent Vice if anyone is interested.