thomas pynchon

December 23 2023

I Need More Perversion

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I didn’t read as many books as I wanted to this year. I always have this illusion that I will be that pretentious motherfucker who just reads and reads and reads and will be really fucking insufferable about it. But no. For the most part it was me trying to hide myself from the world while watching stupid Youtube videos. As always. Yup.

But I did manage to complete two books I had always wanted to finish.

I was so happy to finish Gogol’s Dead Souls. It was funny, riveting and irritating in all the best ways. The satire was very biting and made me realize that people have always been fucking idiots. Although it didn’t have that goth sensibilities I fantasized about during my adolescence having the same title of a Joy Division album, it was quite good.

Too bad Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow didn’t leave me as satisfied. While I did enjoy Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, for most of its 777 pages GR was absolute torture. I understood what the words meant, but when they were put together in the form of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, all meaning was lost. I was happy that I finished it, but for the most part I did not like it. Maybe I’ll have to reread it? (Yeah, let’s hold off on that idea for a while.)

And I don’t know if reading GR killed my enjoyment of reading because I quit the next two books I tried to read midway: Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe and New Millennium Boyz by Alex Kazemi. I found the Fuccboi unbearable and even though I am about five years older than the kids of NMB I didn’t identify with any of the kids. I didn’t even identify with some of the older kids. To be honest, I had borrowed NMB as an ebook from the library and let the loan lapse. Even though I didn’t identify with the kids, I did enjoy it more than I did Fuccboi.

I think I just need a big wasabi palate cleanser to my brain, CTRL+ALT+DELETE, whatever.

I also listened to my first audiobook: Britney Spears’s memoir The Woman in Me. I did like listening to the book, but don’t get me wrong: listening to an audiobook IS NOT READING. But this is a sad story, and listening to Michelle Williams narrate, especially during the head-shaving era, it was just fucking tragic. It put me back during that period, and I remember thinking that Britney was going punk because she had no other options. And with all of the shit people have been saying over the last few months, I guess people still haven’t learn to leave Britney the fuck alone. (butit’sstillnotreading)

I liked Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel The Shards especially for the nostalgia of 1981 LA, and I didn’t really like Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger. I now understand The Meaning of Mariah Carey (my birthday twin) and really want to hear her “grunge” album with her vocals. I dipped my toes into the “feminist retelling of Greek mythology” with Costanza Casati’s Clytemnestra which was all right, meh, and fucking loved Ernst Junger’s WWI memoir of the battlefields in Storm of Steel.

Oh! I almost forgot. I also finally read Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye! Jesus fucking Christ how subliminally perverse! I need more perversion in my life. (I really think everyone does.)

September 3 2023

Gravity’s Rainbow – And There You Have It

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I’m glad I’ve stuck it out. Now that I’m a few chapters into the second part, the narrative is a lot easier to follow. Instead of random circular vignettes that leave you dizzy and lost, things are following a more linear path. Don’t worry, it’s not a linear narrative. There is a musical dance number with lab rats! It’s fucking insane, but at least I know what the fuck is going on.

Most importantly, however, I came to the portion of the novel that got its Pulitzer prize revoked. In this Part II, there have been a few sex scenes, and this particular one didn’t really raise my eyebrows. It’s a standard BDSM scene until… Well…

As I’m reading this part, I’m realizing there are a lot of details that I missed thanks to the obtuseness of the first part. I figure I’ll have to go back and read those 180-or-so pages much more carefully. Nevertheless, it’s a very fun read. It’s funny, fucked up, strange, and not as shitty as it seems (literally!)

Ok. I’m diving back in.

August 26 2023

What the Fuck Have I Gotten Into?

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Around eight years ago I finished David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, so I thought it was about time to get to Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. I’m getting towards the end of the first part of the book, at around page 150, and all I can think about is, “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?”

GR is a fucking slog of a tome. My Penguin paperback edition is 776 pages, and unlike IJ there are not over 100 pages of endnotes. Also I started reading this on July 31, so I’m not getting through this easily.

The problem: I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. It was a very bad sign at the very beginning of the novel after it’s famous opening lines, “A screaming comes across the sky,” we are presented with a mass evacuation of civilians in what I eventually surmised to be London at the end of WWII. The folks are taken to a old hotel outside of the city when all of the sudden we are introduced to Pirate Prentice and his… um… I don’t know who they are to be honest. His flatmates? His coworkers? His army squad? Come to find out that the evacuation scene was a dream, but I went back and tried to see where that was implied. I don’t know. I guess I see it after looking at it a million times, but fuck man. This is just the first three pages.

But no. I’m determined to finish this because we’ve been told that this is the best postwar novel, period. It won the 1973 National Book Award and is allegedly should have been a unanimous Pulitzer Prize winner but was rejected because it was deemed to be obscene among other things. Now THAT is reason enough to get me to finish this motherfucker. But as I went on, with characters coming in and out like a revue, stories jumping around that I didn’t notice had jumped around until I was already knee-deep and completely lost, it’s tough. Like I said, I have no idea what is going on.

Not to say that the writing is bad. It’s really funny and mischievous that you have no idea if the facts Pynchon presents are true or Trumpian. I mean, there is a character who is running around the bombed-out London wasteland with a toilet stuck on his foot. And, from what I’ve read, one of the characters who is meant to be central to the narrative, Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop can predict where a V-2 rocket strikes based on where he fucks bringing up quite a discussion on whether his hardons are a reverse-Pavlovian response.

This isn’t my first rodeo with Pynchon. I’ve read V, Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge, so I’m well aware of his style and humor. But this one is going to take a few readings to even begin to understand which brings up this question: Is it my fault it’s difficult or is it the author’s fault? Also, if I don’t see the genius in this, does this mean I’m stupid? Well I know other things I do and are ignorant about make me stupid, but is this another reason to add to the list?

I guess I’ll just continue to slog on.