How do some authors ever get published?
I'm currently reading The Crying of Lot 49 and am roughly about 1/3 of the way through it. The book itself is only about 150 pages or so, though it seems more like 300. This is my first run-in with Pynchon, and to be honest, I've developed a good deal of sympathy for certain people who have previously attempted to tackle some of his other works such as Mason and Dixon (Word of advice--just put the book away as it will never be completed). As a pretty experienced reader, I find that Pynchon's prose style is unnecessarily confusing--it seems as though he doesn't have an understanding of the term "sentence clarity" or "sentence structure." While there may be those out there who would be quick to label him "genius" and attribute the salvation of modern literature to his works, I will (as I generally do from time to time) call bullshit. Those who have discussed certain novels in detail with me know that I am not an apologist for any author.
Granted, I'm not finished with the book yet, but it's turning out to be one of those that you want to hurry up and finish simply because you don't want to ever fuck with it again. Ever. If anyone out there can shed some light on this author or this book, please comment accordingly. I don't care whether it's good or bad--as of right now, I just don't get it. Why would anyone want to read this shit?
posted by Jeremy @ 11:33 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
My only experience with Pynchon is with his short story "Entropy."
Obviously, I have both Mason and Dixie and The Crying of Lot 49, though it's not likely that either one will get read in my household. I pretty much just have no interest in that shit.
Perhaps you should use Sparknotes instead.
Actually, I'm reading a chapter or two then going back to SNotes, just to make sure I'm not missing some great and fantastic thing.
Which I'm not.
Put Mason and Dixon away: to resist is futile.
I got Mason and Dixon at the STD booke faire. It was inscribed as a gift to a certain former department head and appears to be in mint/near mint condition. The way I see it, it's one of those books we all have but will never read (like Ulysees and anything by Gertie Stein).
I'm with Elise..."Entropy" is my only Pynchon experience. I remember marveling at it thanks to the prof's explanation, but if I'd read it on my own I would've been reasonably pissed and confused.
A quick tip to Pynchon: 90% if the stuff in his books is "white noise" meant to throw you off the trail. You have to filter through the bullshit and get to the grit of the matter.
It is kind of like How the Dead Live and the tibetan book of the dead. When you die they throw a false world at you and try to get you to fall for the trick, but the secret to nirvana is seeing through the lie to the truth.
That is what Pynchon is about. He throws a ton of shit at you and makes you filter through the bullshit to get to the heart of the matter.
It is really kind of ingenious in a "I would kick this guy in the nuts if I ever met him sort of way."
Think of Entropy. It is the breaking down of systems of communication or a measure of the disorder of a thermodynamic system or how mixed-up the system is.
The concept of entropy in information theory describes with how much randomness or with what amount of uncertainity there is in a signal or random event. An alternative way to look at this is to talk about how much information is carried by the signal (or signifier). How much does information get distorted from the signifier to the signified?
Read Sanctuary instead. IT IS GREAT.
I miss you guys. I miss grad school. :(.
What a great site, how do you build such a cool site, its excellent.
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