Meditative story. Pynchonesque.

Story is a fun time if you like short, weird mysteries.

But the narrator needs a glass of water.

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2 people found this helpful

Junk poet...

After a dip into current fiction with Shani Bolanjiu I fancied another run down memory lane with a re-read of this, that I’d first read thirty years ago - October 1984 to be precise. In all that I’ve re-read with the ‘benefit’ of thirty years, I’ve always been more than impressed with how well they have stood up to the test of time and memory. Here again, my warm glow was fanned and I quickly re-entered Pynchon’s world to my great rest and satisfaction.

What was a surprise was just how poetic some of the runs are - they definitely stand in isolation as set pieces and can really be appreciated for the depth and width of the vision and a simple connection to everyday sensual life. A revelation.

Where Umberto Eco and Jorge Luis Borges follow and seeks to align with a long literary tradition, Pynchon’s cod-history does not diminish the fact that he is writing from the mid-60s was a whole new genre. The same, really is that despite many attempts the English writers - Martin Amis and Will Self - it has never been bettered. There’s a doctoral thesis which might line up Roberto Bolano and anticipate further writings from Tom McCarthy. We are not there yet - and, as such, whilst Pynchon himself is unconvinced, this still represents a real and lasting achievement and, apart from a half-way delve into V, also represents the full extent of my venture into Vineland.

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Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read

Talking about this book immediately feels wrong to me. It feels as though I will simply do it a disservice. The complexities of the novel and nuances are aloof. Trying to grab on to them is not easy. Trying to comprehend them, even harder. But part of that feels intensional, and everything in the novel is by design. At the end you are left with so many questions and so many thought. But the centre, the chore of what is communicated, the paranoia, confusion and struggle for meaning remain.

Oedipa Maas is beautifully crafted as this woman thrown along by the world, trapped and unhappy or dissatisfied with her life, grabbing hold of and searching for meaning, desperately in the things that she sees. The mystery, the Tristaro, is something that I will think about for a good deal of time.

But besides the confusing, seemingly random plot, and character actions and interaction, apparent cameos, breaks and deep dives into some fictional and some real historical moments, there is one thing that makes this book worth the read, if nothing else does for you, and that’s the prose.

There are moments, lines, sentences, paragraphs, that will stay with you forever. Snapshots of beauty, that are a hairs breath from poetry, that move you without meaning from the rhyme alone.

I will be rereading this one with a second hand book and a pen for taking notes. This is not one suited for a single read.

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what happened?

read it twice, thought I'd missed something. must have. so ready for some therapy, need a debrief...

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Drivel

Don’t bother should be in the bin boring awful and total waste of money…. Doesn’t even make sense

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Disappointed

Atrocious drivel read in apalling american drawl. I am rarely disappointed by books from Audio Books but this was a regretable exception and a waste of money.

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8 people found this helpful