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Post by pissfun on Nov 9, 2006 15:46:15 GMT
V actually was the first Pynchon I tried to read, having picked up the book about 10 days ago. Read a few pages, found myself throughly confused, and set it down. As I alluded to earlier, I'm having a hard time with continuity here. There's just nothing happening with the writing (yet) that's really sucking me in. Hell I'm finding myself distracted by his choice of character names.
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Post by dystonia on Nov 9, 2006 16:38:04 GMT
are there any Pynchon scholars here? I've only just started trying to read him, and to be completely frank, I've found his writing almost completely unapproachable. It's not as if I don't recognize his brilliance and (at times) eloquence, I just can't seem to find a practical means of entry into his world. If anyone can offer some assistance, - whatever that means - please do so. Start with the relatively accessible (and compact) 'Crying of Lot 49' (which is worth it for the priceless 'Courier's Tragedy' scene alone). Once you get the hang of that one, the rest will come more easily. I'd skip 'Vineland' completely as well. If you make it all the way through GR, you'll probably end up rereading it a few times - you'll always find something you didn't notice the last time, and it tends to improve with repeated exposure. I don't think any other writer has so eloquently captured the craziness of our times than Pynchon. I'm looking forward to his forthcoming book - hopefully an improvement on 'Mason & Dixon', which was decent enough but seemed to lack the scope of his earlier work somewhat.
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Post by pissfun on Nov 11, 2006 20:42:29 GMT
thanks for the advice
how much of the accessibility of Lot 59 stems from it's meager length? - especially when compared with copies of the yellow pages like mason & dixon and gravity's rainbow.
also, why the knock on Vineland?
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Post by Joe Chip on Nov 12, 2006 17:47:44 GMT
The shortness of Lot 49 means there aren't as many diversions, dead ends, opportunities to lose the narrative thread and the reader's interest.
Personally I loved and would highly recommend Vineland - politically a very timely book in response to the events of the 1980s and therefore his single biggest downer with Capital triumphing over utopian dreams in perpetuity...
There's a great guidebook to Gravity's Rainbow by a US academic whose name escapes me which really helped me to enjoy a second reading of the book. Rather like Joyce's Finnegans Wake, some kind of guide to the territory is almost indispensable.
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Post by pissfun on Nov 12, 2006 19:50:49 GMT
There's a great guidebook to Gravity's Rainbow by a US academic whose name escapes me which really helped me to enjoy a second reading of the book. Rather like Joyce's Finnegans Wake, some kind of guide to the territory is almost indispensable. You wouldn't be referring to A Gravity’s rainbow companion : sources and contexts for Pynchon’s novel / by Steven Weisenburger by any chance
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Post by Joe Chip on Nov 13, 2006 1:06:11 GMT
You wouldn't be referring to A Gravity’s rainbow companion : sources and contexts for Pynchon’s novel / by Steven Weisenburger by any chance Yeah that's the one. Some more book recommendations, just random non-fiction things- "The Rise of New Labour" - Robin Ramsey "Stasiland" - Anna Funder "As If" - Blake Morrison "What Lisa Knew" - Joyce Johnson "Tell Me If I've Stopped" - David Greenberger "The Annotated Alice" - Lewis Carroll/Martin Gardner
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Post by luke on Nov 29, 2006 1:11:49 GMT
I recently read Lexicon Devil by Brendan Mullen, Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey. It tells the incredible story of the Germs, but it's purely comprised of quotes from interviews with people who were involved with the band (and some great photos are included as well). I am a fan of the Germs, but I think the book would appeal to a range of people.
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Post by richardm on Dec 11, 2006 12:44:24 GMT
Piero Camporesi, an Italian historian is a stunning writer. Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe is a great read.
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Post by kristian on Dec 11, 2006 13:25:16 GMT
Currently reading a concise history of Scotland
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Post by theotherjohn on Feb 11, 2007 23:35:20 GMT
Wonder if anyone here can help with a query... I recently read about an infamous Japanese SM novel called 'Yapoo the Human Cattle' written by Shozo Numa, and I'm interested in reading it. However, as far as I could find it doesn't seem to have been published in English (though it seems to have been translated into French). Does anyone know if there actually is an English translation available to buy? I can't read French or Japanese sadly... thanks.
Been reading the three Todd Solondz screenplays published by Faber and Faber. Black humour at its finest.
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Post by murdermystery on Feb 17, 2007 0:42:39 GMT
gotten some nice rec's to look out for in the future here... thanks guys. as for me, i'll throw onto the table:
-Portrait of an Englishman in his Chateau - Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues -Castle of Communion - Bernard Noel -Animal Rights and Pornography - J. Eric Miller -The Image & Women's Rites - Jean/ne de Berg -La Maison de Rendezvous - Alain Robbe-Grillet -all of Bataille's fiction works, obv.
and I'll second the rec's for Guyotat & Dennis Cooper. I've yet to be let down by Cooper, but my faves from him have probably been The Sluts and The Ash Grey Proclamation (the short story that comes with the limited 'Dennis' CD Comp)
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Post by theotherjohn on Feb 17, 2007 1:33:48 GMT
I bought Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy and In The Labyrinth not long ago, hope to read them soon (maybe this week?). And I'm just about to watch Last Year at Marienbad after the namecheck in the Guardian last week (LoveFilm really is a great service).
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Post by murdermystery on Feb 17, 2007 18:22:42 GMT
I bought Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy and In The Labyrinth not long ago, hope to read them soon (maybe this week?). And I'm just about to watch Last Year at Marienbad after the namecheck in the Guardian last week (LoveFilm really is a great service). Jealousy and In The Labyrinth were the first books I read by him; they work well as an introduction into his world I think. Last Year at Marienbad is a truly great film- Robbe-Grillet's own films (specifically Eden and After, Jeu avec le Feu, and Trans-Europ-Express) are just as brilliant and worth seeing.
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Post by motownoni on Mar 13, 2007 22:06:01 GMT
peter walsh- gang war the inside story of the manchester gangs
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Post by luke on Mar 14, 2007 1:55:48 GMT
I don't know if anyone here is into poetry, but I'm looking for some good poetry to read. If someone could point me in the right direction that would be great. It's probably worth mentioning that I'm not too familiar with poetry but I'm open to anything (Ted Hughes' "Birthday Letters" is the only collection I have read and that was about 6 years ago).
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