What say ye, his latest worth a look?
Well, I thought V., The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow to be first-class novels. I have not really been able to get into his later work, but I’d love to give Mason and Dixon another try.
As for his newest, I’d probably try reading it eventually.
Sure, he’s always worth a read. However, I just finished Gravity’s Rainbow, and so I’ll give it another decade before I start another of his books, especially this thousand page monstrosity. It took me several months to finish it. Check out one of his shorter works if you aren’t sure about his style.
I don’t know if she’s the right subject for Pynchon, but I researched Kovalevskaya’s life extensively for a nonfiction book several years ago and she would make a fascinating subject for somebody’s historical novel.
Amazon has an early Publisher’s Weekly review posted, along with some words from Pynchon.
He’s not for everyone (I find him a precious slog), but many people I respect respect his work a lot.
Love his writing; it’s just such an insane, irritating, difficult, but ultimately totally awesome experience every time. “Gravity’s Rainbow” and especially “The Crying of lot 49” are completely different books each time I re-read them, while V is just consistently V. Against the Day sounds like a synthesis of and the culmination of everything he’s written to date, and I’m super excited.
I read three pages of Mason and Dixon and then I thought why. But I liked V and GR as cool language exp’s so whadda frudge? Pynchon’s cool but I’ll wait to see what this noo thing is all about.
Seriously, he’s a prognosticator but Neal Stephenson is more readable.
Perhaps I’m not trying hard enough, but I just really struggled to get anywhere with Gravity’s Rainbow - it just seemed like an incoherent stream of jibberish to me. What am I doing wrong?
Trying to read it sequentially? I may be exposed as a dilettante and a skimmmer, but there are knotty sections of GR that I’ve never been able to endure, so I just move on to the next part I can cope with. I’ve probably read 75% of the book, maybe 85% by now, and I’ve gotten more out of it than some books I’ve read every letter of.
I’ll probably get Pynchon’s new one. For those scared of “Gravity’s Rainbow”–“The Crying of Lot 49” might be a better introduction to his earlier works.
However, “Gravity’s Rainbow Illustrated: One Picture for Every Page” will be released soon. Might be fun!