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by Thomas Pynchon
In a word (or two or three): i read this because i'm too much of a
puss to try gravity's rainbow again
From Mr. Hipster:
I took the wimpy way out. I could have
tried to read Gravity¡s Rainbow again. It would be my third time.
The furthest I ever got in that abomination was page 158 (out of 980
or so). That¡s only two pages shy of The Crying of Lot 49¡s whole
160. Pynchon¡s prose is daunting. His sentences twist and turn and
run-on and fold in on themselves. This is the longest 160 pages has
ever taken me to readÝand this is his most basic, straight-forward
book. He is constantly quoted by high-minded MENSA-types, and is probably
admired by a generations of nerds everywhere. Despite that, his stories
have, like Tom Robbins, a good deal of absurdity. It starts with his
characters¡ names, which are at the same time ridiculous, and completely
impossible to remember (the protagonist in this case is named Oedipa
Maas). I found myself having to leaf back through the book to recall
who was whom. This one was at least reasonably linear, but the subject
matter was just bizarre. Our aforementioned protagonist is named the
executor of the will of her now deceased ex-lover. He was apparently
a wealthy real estate mogul in an imaginary town in California. As
she delves into his holdings and his life, she uncovers what she believes
to be a secret society that is somehow tied in with the Postal Service.
This discovery spins the story into crazy curlicues of narrative that
tendril out in several directions but never really re-address the
core question of what the hell is going on. It¡s really as if Pynchon
is screwing with the reader seeing how far he can push him to care
about obscure fake plays about ancient postal service empires. I¡m
clearly not smart enough to figure out what he¡s after here, but,
again, that¡s not the point. I swear the man site in his hut or castle
or wherever he lives and laughs at all the pretentious shits who claim
that his novels are the key to the universe. Perhaps, like Oedipa
herself, we are just chasing a ghost to no end.
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