/lit/ - Literature

This is one of his weaker ones, but I don’t like Pynchon overall. I see what he’s doing and try to understand the context of his work, but to put it crudely I feel like “man, if you don’t give a shit, I don’t either !” towards him.

>>18011791
>man, if you don’t give a shit, I don’t either !
please expound

>>18011610
ive only read inherent vice but i loved it.

>>18011804
I just personally have a low tolerance for the forms his “irreverence” takes — it takes me out of it and I don’t think the parodic value is worth it.

what's that you say? you aren't sure what information you can get from this book?
hmm. almost enough to sake your faith in the transmitability of information in the first place. is there no reliable connection between this world and Pynchon's? maybe if you were more sensitive. maybe if there was some kind of demon who could pick Pynchon's thoughts, one by one as they occurred to him, and send them to you somehow. convert them from _information_ embedded in his head into something tangible, something you can _work_ with... hmm.

>>18011894
aww shit nigga that's all you had to say! thank you for this. any other big brain shit I missed?

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtqt0bXb4Y

anytime someone doesn't "get" tcol49 they should at least watch this, but i would say it's about the quiet male suffering. the fact that the protagonist was female makes ppl think it's some kind of feminist book, but when the housewife goes out into the world, she uncovers not a just vast mail conspiracy, but wide spread male suffering, hidden in invisible ink and discarded in waste bins.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dtqt0bXb4Y [Embed]

anytime someone doesn't "get" tcol49 they should at least watch this, but i would say it's about the quiet male suffering. the fact that the protagonist was female makes ppl think it's some kind of feminist book, but when the housewife goes out into the world, she uncovers not just a vast mail conspiracy, but wide spread male suffering, hidden in invisible ink and discarded in waste bins.

What if I told you the heirs of Thurn und Taxis are posting on /lit/ right now?

>>18011610
Pynchon himself has said he had no idea what he was doing with this book and he hates it. It's not really that good of a book.

The reason that people read it is because it's his shortest novel, so you can just quickly dive in and figure out if you want to commit to reading one of the labyrinthine works.

Do you like the style? Themes? Approach to plot structure (e.g. never ending uncertainty with unfullfilling conclusions - like life)? Then you'll want to try out V. (Or Inherrent Vice, but that's more of a detour.)

Do you find it overblown and feel like a version of this where the writer was actually trying makes you want to swallow a .45? Then you now know you don't like Pynchon.

Re: pomo in general. This is more personal opinion but I find the big name pomo writers rather unique so no one book is going to be a good litmus test for the entire category. All you're really going to find out is if you can tolerate their gimmicks, which aren't really well displayed in 49.

>>18013116
i like pynchon in general but always thought his attempts at humor fell flat

I sweat the pendulum periodically swings on whether /lit/ thinks it's decent or not. Sometimes consensus opinion is "it's good, it's short, it's a great place to start with Pynchon", whereas now it's "it's short, it's shallow, it's not worth it."

Anyhow, it condenses the good and bad of Pynchon into a short space. So there's plenty of cool paranoia (even though I'd say the novella is ultimately about the difficulties of human communication) but also plenty of that particularly Pynchonian whimsy that can grate in such concentrated doses.

>>18013407
There's some funny shit but it's kinda in a nonsensical, pythonesque vein. Maybe a bit pompous, but contemporary quixotic may be the best description?

>>18014773
I think it depends on the time of day of the post and which part of the world is up. Most Americans would probably appreciate its brevity for instance.

>>18013116
>Pynchon himself has said he had no idea what he was doing with this book and he hates it.
extremely pseudy to point this out every time tcol gets posted

>>18011610
>muh plot
ngmi

>>18011791
lol filtered

>>18011791
>if you don’t give a shit
where on earth do you get this idea, unless you’ve only read lot49 which he wrote intentionally as boiler plate to get his publisher to drop him— his other books took years of work and required extensive research to write, I don’t see the lack of giving shits here

>>18012958
>quiet mail suffering

>>18017097
pynched again

>>18015807
Well, since OP is asking about the book, I'm imagining he hasn't seen every other Pynchon thread then.