Oh yeah but as well as all those others, i've got to read finnegans wake first.
I do think pynchon is an excellent writer, but I agree with what you said in the Joyce thread about the difference between Joyce and pynchon
I like what I would call the "process" element of Joyce, where its rooted in very ordinary day to day stuff. Although maybe that goes out the window with the Wake.
Whereas when I read pynchon, I feel quite strongly that it's all inside his head, he's making it up as he goes along. It's great, he has a lot of good things to say, the flights of fancy and the tying of the maths to the spiritual are very enthralling, but you can get lost because of that issue.
And, more importantly got me I suppose, you care about the characters less.
Like one of the chums if chance, in the opening section, has this quirk where he's very obsessed with grammar and pronunciation being correct, it's a tic of his. But the next time you meet him, several hundred pages later, that side of his character doesn't really come into play, as though Pynchon has forgotten about it, or it no longer serves the story.
So as a result you find it hard to get a solid picture of these people.
I do think pynchon is an excellent writer, but I agree with what you said in the Joyce thread about the difference between Joyce and pynchon
This is partly what I was getting at re: Joyce mentioning lots of mundane things alongside the cosmic. It feels stable despite the scope, complexity and experimentation. Deleuze's "piece of fresh land". Nothing's solid in what came after. Once you get to Burroughs, Pynchon etc, it's all in pieces.
I like what I would call the "process" element of Joyce, where its rooted in very ordinary day to day stuff. Although maybe that goes out the window with the Wake.
Whereas when I read pynchon, I feel quite strongly that it's all inside his head, he's making it up as he goes along. It's great, he has a lot of good things to say, the flights of fancy and the tying of the maths to the spiritual are very enthralling, but you can get lost because of that issue.
And, more importantly got me I suppose, you care about the characters less.
Like one of the chums if chance, in the opening section, has this quirk where he's very obsessed with grammar and pronunciation being correct, it's a tic of his. But the next time you meet him, several hundred pages later, that side of his character doesn't really come into play, as though Pynchon has forgotten about it, or it no longer serves the story.
So as a result you find it hard to get a solid picture of these people.