Thomas Pynchon

luka

Well-known member
it's suggested that capital and technology are conspiring across sides and borders, using the war to reshape the world

Yes this I got from Rathenau, it states it explicitly. The war is a revolution, a transferral of power into corporate hands. Elsewhere he says the war is about markets, the deaths and violence just a diversionary spectacle
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
There's a thread running through Pynchon's stuff concerning science and technology, how it builds and destroys potential worlds, bends history to its will and almost exerts a force of its own. It makes more sense if you've read some of his other stuff, he has this whole thing in Mason & Dixon of the two surveyors blundering across America, scarring the Earth with the Mason-Dixon line and ignoring the much older orders that people like the Native Americans are aware of and trying to preserve.

In GR, it's suggested that capital and technology are conspiring across sides and borders, using the war to reshape the world, and that there's potentially some mystical component to it. You get giant angels appearing, witches, seances and various other things and the rocket itself exerts some sort of influence on people.

It's hard to simplify it, but I think that essentially what he's getting at is that religion and mysticism are too readily dismissed and aren't as separate from science and technology as we're led to believe.

Binary oppositions in general are a thing that Pynchon both uses constantly and treats as problematic. So thematically he's constantly setting up oppositions between black and white, matter and spirit, preterite and elect, us and them, science and superstition, but at the same time they're seen as fencing in, territorializing, restricting potential, the reason that everything's so fucked up; Oedipa Maas know's that excluded middles are "some bad shit", by dividing the country Mason and Dixon are unwittingly helping to stifle its potential. This is why entropy's important, although it's been too long since I thought hard about this stuff (or about entropy) to pin down that analogy.
 

luka

Well-known member
I always more or less enjoy it at the beginning then the magic starts to wear off. It doesn't help that he repeats the same tricks ad infinitum so with each repetition there's diminishing returns.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've read v and vineland but remember nothing except one of them starts with someone jumping through a Window. Inherent Vice is rubbish. Bleeding edge is rubbish. Lot49 has great ideas although also hyperactive and annoying. GR I'm going to say is good despite not having finished it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Gotta say that I get increasingly frustrated with this guy. Could be cos that the last two of his books I read were Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge - on those I basically agree with Luka's assessment above. Have I changed or are they simply much worse than V, Vineland, GR, CofL49 etc
Edit: I don't think so - Bleeding Edge in particular is simply without merit.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I liked Bleeding Edge a lot more than Vineland and Inherent Vice, but none of them are up there with his best.
Really? I thought Bleeding Edge was a total waste of time, came that close to to giving it up... got to the end and wished I had. What did you find in it?
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I quite enjoyed Inherent Vice but more as a slightly zany detective romp than anything particularly deep. Vineland I couldn't stand, largely because the veneration of 60s counterculture as a moment of revolutionary potential drives me up the wall. Against the Day feels to me like Pynchon for people who really like Pynchon.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I thought it was basically a better version of Vineland and enjoyed seeing him tackle a period I was actually around for. It wasn't perfect and it didn't quite read like Pynchon, more like David Foster Wallace perhaps, but I liked the sparing way he dealt with 9/11 after it being built up as "Pynchon's 9/11 book" and the stuff inside DeepArcher intrigued me, particularly the idea of the dead crossing over somehow.
I was also into the way he dealt with family and had Maxine reshuffle her priorities at the end. A lot of his characters tend to just push on into oblivion, whereas she seems to clock that she's out of her depth and her kids are more important to her. The conversation with her father toward the end was cool too.
Thanks, good answers. I like the idea of the dead crossing through the internet too (and I see why you liken it to Vineland as the thanates are one of the few things I remember from that). I guess there were other things in there that were interesting too... but they amounted to nothing. Less than nothing. I'm not someone who demands that everything be followed right to the end and spelled out but BE seemed just like a guy limply prodding at a few almost interesting ideas and, ultimately, lacking anything to say about them or do with them. At the end it felt like I'd learned nothing, that the ideas were reheated and, worst of all, I didn't enjoy it all. Each page was harder to turn than the last. Wonder what I'd think if I read Vineland now though...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Inherent Vice was zany, that's exactly it. Stupid food, stoner jokes. I expected more from the guy who wrote Gravity's Rainbow. The film was rubbish cos the book was rubbish too.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
plus I'm a big fan of things being suggested but never followed up,
I like this too but there is a kind of spectrum of this which at one end is just the lightest of mentions and at the other end is explicitly spelled out. For me I don't demand right at the latter end by any means but BE was too near the former.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The 60s counter culture or acid culture or whatever you wanna call it certainly had a dark side. When the acid turns bad, the trips stop being fun, partying switches to desperation etc How many hippies and rock stars OD'd or otherwise died cos of drugs? The anything goes thing was a cover for all kinds of sins... and then Altamont, Manson etc I think there is something kinda fascinating in the way that bright, gentle people vibe tips over into darkness so easily - but I admit it's a morbid fascination.
The other day I was watching something with that song Crimson and Clover in it and I was thinking how that song even though it's pretty and everything is sorta creepy. I don't think it was intended to be there but the darkness is inherent cos of when it was written and what it was about. Same for Crystal Blue Persuasion by the same band. Makes me think of cults and bad acid and people who went so far out they never came back.
 

luka

Well-known member
I quite liked this too - https://www.berfrois.com/2014/09/bleeding-edgers/

" … without shame or concern for etymology: 11 September in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge"

In “…without shame of concern for etymology,” Hanjo Berressem discusses Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge in the context post-9/11 fiction. In contrast to narratives of posttraumatic melancholy, Berressem argues that Bleeding Edge is a “Jeremiad about the fall and the sins of America.” The result is an essay that makes a powerful case for Pynchon as a prophetic, if brutal, witness to American society turning towards security and control in the shadow of tragedy.

I don't think it's unfair to say de lillo is one of the worst writers ever to use the english language. Dumb in such a typically american male way.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I quite like DeLillo, but I can't disagree with this particular criticism. There's definitely something kind of clumsy and boneheaded about him.
I wonder if DeLillo and Pynchon, like DFW with Infinite Jest had the odd moment of genius (White Noise, Gravity's Rainbow) and a few lesser but still good moments (say Americana or V) and the rest was a load of dross.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Now that I think about it, something else I liked was the way that it corresponded with V. and the two felt like bookends. He started in NYC with a cast of characters running away from any sort of commitment and ended in NYC with a cast of characters leaning into it.
Good point. I don't think of Pynchon as an NY writer but when I read BE I think there was some unconscious recall of V happening for me cos that was the only other one of his I read that was to any extent set there.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'm not entirely convinced by Wallace though. I think he has moments of brilliance scattered across his catalogue, but everything I've read of his has been kind of patchy, even Infinite Jest.
I think that IJ is a truly great book. One of the few that I can think of off the top of my head* that combines that kind of cleverness and invention - even experimentation - with truly effective and affecting writing that has heart. Of course in almost thousand pages I can't say there isn't a line or two that isn't perfect but compared to everything else I've read by him it's way ahead. Cos everything else of his I've read has been total bollocks.
*would love to hear other suggestions if you have any.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
re: GR - The whole thing of cause and effect being thrown into question is fascinating to me, and using a supersonic rocket to demonstrate as much was a stroke of genius. It's such a versatile symbol too, he's able to do all sorts with it.
Agree. It's an inversion of cause and effect! But it's also a metaphor for control systems and social programming! But it's also a massive willy!
 
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