The Now books have the quality of an exploration, of digestion in progress. The Then books have a deliberateness to them, a deep dive into a specific set of ideas dappled with carefully chosen historic details. Now includes “Bleeding Edge,” “Vineland,” “The Crying of Lot 49” and the frame of “V.” The Then books are “Gravity’s Rainbow” (1944-45 seen from the vantage of 1973), “Inherent Vice” (1970 seen from 2009), “Against the Day” (circa 19) and “Mason & Dixon” (the 1760s by way of 1997). Here’s Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times.Įach new Pynchon novel presents a different way to parse his bibliography, and “Bleeding Edge” makes a solid case for a divide between books set roughly in present moment and not, Now versus Then. With that said, a new Pynchon novel is definitely an event, and everyone I know is super-excited about Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon’s brand new novel. (In this sense it is, however, exactly like my dislike of David Foster Wallace, and I can summarize how both of these opinions make me feel: It’s lonely out here.) My dislike of Thomas Pynchon is not fashionably correct, the way my dislike of Philip Roth or Cormac McCarthy is. I want to like Pynchon, especially since the kind of cutting social satire that I understand his books add up to ought to be right up my alley (if only I could stand reading them). I don’t understand why all these smart people love him so much and I don’t, and I feel very isolated in this position. Who knows? My friends have Pynchon tattoos, have named their bands or websites after Pynchon, have even written adoring Litkicks articles about Pynchon. I guess they find his convoluted style fun and challenging. All my friends and literary comrades and people I respect love Thomas Pynchon. I don’t like a writer who keeps trying to distract my attention when I’m trying to read.īut, well, here’s the thing. I find his hysterical habit of packing multiple cosmic curlicues, pop-culture puns and obscure historical references into every sentence simply obnoxious. And yet I can’t stand his thick, impenetrably clever prose. The fact that I don’t love Thomas Pynchon is statistically nearly impossible.Īny literary heat map of my favorite writers would find Pynchon near the center, hovering somewhere between Brautigan, Vonnegut, Kesey, Burroughs, Thompson, Acker, Coetzee, Auster.
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