Pynchon the Master Writer: A Re-evaluation

Blogger has kicked me in the crotch twice as I've attempted to post on this book.

The first post was rather lengthy and funny. For some reason it disappeared.

The second post was much shorter and not funny, simply because I hate doing shit twice.


As opposed to rewriting my post again, instead I have decided to reprint the following interview over the novel that I did with Playboy magazine back in the late 60's.

Question 1:
Would I recommend this book?
No. Not unless someone was in desperate need to write a paper over forms of (mis)communication, southern California drug culture, paranoia, or books that leave the reader hanging. While there is a certain high-brow element in the text, it seems more scattered than Joyce and abundantly more pointless. It's almost as though he is attempting to confuse the reader even more than The Waste Land, with a lot less ability. I will give the author credit--it is an awfully confusing novel that tries too hard to be experimental, reminding me of the failures of Gertie Stein and other such literary revolutionists. The last third moved more quickly and made more sense, though the book's true purpose (seriously) is to confuse the real issues. What are the real issues? I doubt even the author knows. But then again, I think that's exactly what he was going for.

Question 2:
How did you feel about being left without a "proper" ending. Everyone knows how much you hate ambiguity. Does this fall under the same type of novel?
Not at all. I would much rather have an ending like this. While it could still be considered lazy, wrapping the story up in a nice little package would distract from the chaos of the novel. So I felt that it fit, especially in a story where everything is left a fucking mess.

Question 3:
What have you learned about picking up books to read for fun simply due to the number of pages in a text?
Obviously, it's something I must seriously consider from here on out. I've made a lot of poor judgments in my past, but this one could top them all. It was similar to my experience in middle school of reading Steinbeck's The Red Pony. While it was much shorter than some of the other books we had to choose from, it really didn't make much sense to a kid that age. I think the book with the boy having wet dreams made more sense to me. After I read the Steinbeck book, I contemplated suicide for about a week afterwards.