Is this as difficult as everyone says? Do I really need to start with The Crying of Lot 49 or whatever else?
V. would be a better starting point than Lot49 but nothing wrong with starting with GR. It is not an easy book but its difficulty is dependent on what sort of stuff you generally read. It is not a difficult book to get through but if you are not an attentive reader it is very easy to get lost in.
Against the day longer. Better value for money
Just read mason and dixon and skip the rest id say
>>24106210it really is the best. what i would do to reread it for the first time.
I started with GR first, after vaguely recognising Pynchons name on a shelf in a charity shop, he's no trouble at all once you fall into his rhythm.
The most difficult part of this book is finding the motivation to continue reading it after the first, oh, 70 or 80 pages. It's really not very interesting or worthwhile, there's probably more tangential babble in it than any other book you've read, and that stuff that is coherent and concise is so fantastical as to break any immersion or sense of believability. I would suggest you only read it if you want hipster points.
It's a light-hearted comic romp. Don't be intimidated!
>>24105769Stop ignoring me, bitch.
>>24106254This is a subjective personal opinion.
>>24105769>The Crying of Lot 49It's not going to help so much different no comparison really
I don't think you need to read any Pynchon before diving in to Gravity's Rainbow. The book rules, and it's only "too difficult" if you're determined to "get" every passage. Find a good reader's guide. Here's one: https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/links/culture/rainbow.bell.htmlThen just enjoy the ride. It has a few rough spots, but the highs are very high.
Its difficult at times to follow the narrative but not always. It is definitly a book that makes more sense on the second read
I’ve only read Inherent Vice, is Vineland similar? I might start it soon
>>24108833Just read it dude
I found V. harder to follow than GR. Yeah, GR is packed with details and out-there concepts but the plot is more straightforward to me.
>>24105769I prefer Lot 49 because it's short. I have a limit on how much of Pynchon's style I can handle. Gravity's rainbow is also much, much more difficult and probably not worth your time right now if you're intimidated by it.
I read one page every day.
>>24106214it really is the highest kino
>>24108833inherent vice is very different from the rest of his work imo. It's not much like Vineland
>>24110690>I read one page per day. I first read it while I eat my grape fruit and wait for my oatmeal to cook. While eating my oatmeal i consider that page and then I read that page a second time. While I shower I consider the page in context to the previous page and as I dry myself and dress for the day I consider it in context to the context explored in the previous days shower. As I drink my coffee I copy the page out into a sheet of parchment paper which I then wrap my sandwich in. At this point I forget about my reading and focus on the days tasks until lunch. During lunch I intently study my sandwich's wrapper and the various edits made by a bit of mayo, a stray sprout or a crease in the paper, exploring the new contexts they suggest until I have lost all sense of the original page. Once again I forget about the page and return to the days activities until I return home for the night. Once home I prepare my dinner and season it by reading the page aloud over my meal. I retain very little of this reading of the page and find that the sandwich's editting still occupies my mind. As I eat my food well seasoned with the words of the page it returns to me a word at a time but never in the proper order. I carefully chew each word until I have found its proper place, the I's are most difficult and one can never really be sure if they got the right 'I' in the right place, especially troublesome with dialog. After dinner I go for a walk to help with digestion and prepare my mind for sleep. Before bed I read the page a final time. I sleep soundly.
>>24108833You have early Pynchon which is Slow Learner and V. where he is figuring things out and sorting out his style. Middle Period is from GR to AtD and he mostly has stuff figured out with GR and absolutely has things figured out for the rest, these four books all were started at the same time as GR and are very much tied together in style and theme all of them working towards the same ends and going about it in the same way. Late period is IV and BE, he drops the stylistic and thematic restrictions of his middle period, these are his best stand alone novels, unlike the middle period they can be fully understood on their own and style is built around the needs of the work instead of the needs of a series of works. Not to suggest the middle period works fail out of context of the other books of that period and can not be read in isolation, they do very well on their own but in isolation we can not see his true purpose with those unknowable things that play a prominent role in that period's work. It all works quite well since they are things which can not be known so we never feel like there are massive holes in the books, we just find out later on that Pynchon had a reason for building those books around the unknowable. I would say these works are best read in publication order. Lot 49 is a wildcard and does not fit in with his other works especially stylistically where it seems more a childish parody of his style than written by him. Some love it, some hate it.
I really don't understand when people say this book is more difficult than Ulysses
>>24111190The only reason people think Ulysses is difficult is because they are autistic or don't know how to read and think they need to understand all the references to understand the novel but you only need to understand the references within the contexts they were given which he pretty much gives you right there in the text and generally very close to the references. There is worth in understanding the purpose of the references as a whole but thinking they will provide understanding of Ulysses itself is folly, people have dedicated their life to trying to solve Ulysses and find a hidden message in all those references and a century later no one has even come close or even presented a reasonable theory. The difficulties people have with both GR and Ulysses are the same, they get caught up in the details and lose track of the bigger picture.
>>24111230>the book isn't difficult, it's just that's it's too difficult to understand
>>24111516Why should things be easy to understand?
>>24111531irrelevant question
>>24111516Is that seriously what you think he said?
>>24111544like, oh my gosh, is that for real what you literally think he said?
>>24111557Yeah maybe reading's not for you
>>24111564which books can I read to better refute arguments such as "Is that seriously what you think he said?"?
>>24111077… go on ..
>>24105769>Is this as difficult as everyone saysLol lmao not remotely. But you won't get much out of it without a background in late war German special weapons projects, or the author's SIGINT career in the conflict.
>>24111586"background" makes it sound more depth than required>Germans built rockets during WW2done
>>24111598Pretty much but it is also pretty important to understand that they launched those rockets as well. Reading a biography of Jamf wouldn't hurt.
>>24105769GR was my first Pynchon and it honestly wasn't that hard.After about page 70 I couldn't stop myself from reading
>>24111574If you think that was an argument you may want to start out with 4th or 5th grade grammar book and a dictionary.
