760 pages
English language
Published Dec. 14, 1995 by Penguin Books.
I changed the Publication year from 1973 to 1980. This digital edition is a scan copy of the 9th printing edition of this book (1980) not the first printing(1973)
It's not often that I dislike a book enough to just give up on it, but I did not enjoy the stream-of-consciousness style that Pynchon employs. His work has been described as dense. I can handle dense, but rambling might be more accurate. I didn't care about any of the characters enough to stick around and find out what happens to them. I wish them well, but I'm on to my next title.
Well I read it. Not my thing.
Less of a DNF than an RNF: Refused To Finish, although I read more than half of this overwritten, bloated tome.
Like DeLillo, I find Pynchon to be incredibly overrated--but I understand why he was so vital a force for the moment when his work came to light. Nonetheless, this doesn't mean that I should have to endure his flat, uninteresting characters and his worthless plotting (in spite of his sparkling prose) in the 21st century, where he has little to no relevance.
But I do think it's hilarious how many English postgrads still find it necessary to pontificate on their love for Pynchon in bookstores across the country. Happens every couple of years, while I'm browsing in some musty old shelves, and it's almost always a guy with bad skin or thick glasses who can't help himself, because Pynchon represents what every writer who deserves to be canonized should …
Less of a DNF than an RNF: Refused To Finish, although I read more than half of this overwritten, bloated tome.
Like DeLillo, I find Pynchon to be incredibly overrated--but I understand why he was so vital a force for the moment when his work came to light. Nonetheless, this doesn't mean that I should have to endure his flat, uninteresting characters and his worthless plotting (in spite of his sparkling prose) in the 21st century, where he has little to no relevance.
But I do think it's hilarious how many English postgrads still find it necessary to pontificate on their love for Pynchon in bookstores across the country. Happens every couple of years, while I'm browsing in some musty old shelves, and it's almost always a guy with bad skin or thick glasses who can't help himself, because Pynchon represents what every writer who deserves to be canonized should supposedly aspire to achieve....
Ugh. So much intellectual onanism, and for what? What is the great gift Pynchon has to give us NOW? I think he's a relic of a time and a place that haven't existed for decades. Study him? Sure, but don't elevate him, don't stick him in the pantheon of past masters and make him out to be a god.
A book unlike pretty much everything else I've ever read. Thematically a detective story, but so so much more. It does a great job of conveying the state of mind of the numerous narrators through visual, symbolic and, at times, very emotional storytelling, covering sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, not to mention cinema, chemistry and event tarot...
Worth reading but a real commitment is required to making it all the way through.
Obviously this long, complicated book is immensely worthy, for the way it pushed the boundaries of post-modern writing. It used all the taboo breaking energy of the seventies to include as many fetishes and sexual inclinations as it could, and it is also occasionally brilliantly poetic and heart-breakingly beautiful...BUT...
the way it felt for me was mostly a slog, through a turgid marsh, where I was frequently lost. There's too many characters in too many plot-lines that jump about seemingly at random, leaving me not really caring. I made the mistake of continuing beyond the point where I could easily give up.
Re-read this, perhaps my favorite novel, as an audiobook. It was very well done & gave me a new perspective on the work.
I always enjoy Pynchon's writing style, but this book featured far too much sex of various violent and disturbing sorts. The plot itself wandered a lot, but wasn't too hard to follow. I'm sure I missed all sorts of clever allusions, but I caught enough of them to make me feel smart. I liked the book as a whole, but I'd have a hard time recommending it to my parents, for instance.
I fear I will forever be "in progress" with this one. I pick it up every other year, read the first 100-200 pages, and then drop it again.
This particular iteration was attempt #4. One day I will finish this book.
if not liking a disjointed book involving a long swim through a sewer makes me stupid, so be it. i did like les miserables, so i think the disjointedness is more problematic than the sewer (also, i am possibly not stupid).
given how i feel about vonnegut and infinite jest, disjointed is a problem for me.
i'm sure i can make sense of gravity's rainbow. but i don't care to. the characters or story better be damned intriguing if a writer wants me (instead of the writer or his editor) to get out a pen and paper to put it all together in sensical form.
Sometimes in the midst of reading this book, I would realize that I had no idea what was going on. I was never quite sure if this was because my attention was slipping or because the writing in the book sometimes slips out of sublimity. Either way, you definitely really have to force yourself just to keep reading--to just keep plowing onward, because you're not going to soak all of it in. It's just too dense. But for the frequent moments of utter brilliance scattered all throughout the book, it's worth it. Don't be daunted by the opacity of much of it.
