Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice
by Thomas Pynchon
read: 2015

Perhaps my favorite movie ever is The Big Lebowski, and it's easy to draw parallels between that film and Inherent Vice. Both feature noir-format stories with convoluted plots but a drug-addled hippie protagonist largely unable to comprehend them.

Do we need to stage an intervention at this point for Thomas Pynchon's predilection for writing lyrics for fake pop songs?

The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
read: circa 2006
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I've read The Crying of Lot 49 twice.  I did not quite understand it the first time, so I read it again.  I still did not quite understand it.  I imagine I will repeat this pattern a few more times over my lifetime.  The Crying of Lot 49 has a wonderful quality where you keep feeling like you almost understand it, even though true understanding for the reader is futile - as it is for the book's protagonist Oepida Maas.  But I still feel that if I read the novel just one more time, I can glean another clue.  Maybe I can piece together what is going on in the chopped-up and out-of-order movie Oedipa watches with the lawyer, or Mucho's LSD-inspired speculation that you can re-create an entire person by the pitch they play the violin, or what in the world is going on in play-within-the-play "The Courier's Revenge," or whether any of the secret postal organizations actually exist.  If I can just figure out one more thing, maybe it will all make sense.  Or maybe not.  Is Pynchon cautioning me against reading too much into literature, or encouraging it?  Or is he just messing with me?

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
read: 2010
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, National Book Award

I guess I don't get it.  Gravity's Rainbow has some great parts - I love the argument Roger Mexico has about  the correlation between Slothrop's sexual conquests and locations of V-2 rocket attack sites and how it it is just a statistical oddity and has no predictive value - but man, it is disjointed.  I think that's probably part of the point, but I'm not a big "the novel as craft" guy.  The Wikipedia page on Gravity's Rainbow states that "The number of episodes in each part carries with it a numerological significance which is in keeping with the use of numerology and Tarot symbolism throughout the novel."  But really, who gives a shit?

I do think I would gain something by re-reading the book, and I enjoy Pynchon's writing style.  I'll save that project for my forties though, maybe.