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Book reviews for "Pynchon,_Thomas" sorted by average review score:
Gravity's rainbow
Published in Unknown Binding by Cape ()
Author: Thomas Pynchon
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Don't overanalyze. Don't underestimate.
There are those that consider "Gravity's Rainbow" the greatest American novel of this, or perhaps any, century. I can't make a case for or against this; I haven't read 'em all. However, I will say that "Gravity's Rainbow" is good enough to at least deserve some of the lavish praise its earned. I get the feeling though that some people praise the book just to appear intelligent, just like some people criticize the book just to appear intelligent and unpretentious. However, let me just say that if a book is no more to you than a means of wearing a mask (on the internet for that matter), then you probably did not appreciate it for what it is. So what is "Gravity's Rainbow?" Well, it IS difficult. But unreadable? No. It is encylopedic. But dull and boring? Not in the least! "Gravity's Rainbow" is, if anything, an enormous collection of brainstorms, daydreams, and nightmares of one of the most incredible imaginations of our time. Most of it seems to me to be Pynchon writing to entertain Pynchon. Episodes like the ones with the giant adenoid, the Kenosha Kid, and, of course, Byron the Bulb, are as funny and fun to read as anything written this century. Yes, "Gravity's Rainbow" is extremely deep. But it sure is fun too.

Let me just recommend, however, that you read something else of Pynchon's before tackling this work. I recommend reading 'em in order.

A screaming comes across the psyche

Because we have launched the first V-1, we have launched the final bomb that will be our undoing.

This book is the Ocham's Razor of literature, infinitely bisecting the line or the arc, trying to single out the desired by eliminating the unwanted. In this case, it appears to be working on a most disturbing result--as if it were a warning to us.

We cannot, in reality, bisect the line forever.

*****

On a lighter note (and the book is filled with hilarity), yes I love this encyclopedic book. When I feel I cannot write, I get it out and read the first few pages (through the great "banana breakfast" episode), or the story of 'Byron the Lightbulb' (one of the stories-within-the-story), or Slothrop's adventures in the giant pig suit....

If you can't get past the first 50 pages, and many people have encountered this (as did I), start again. The rewards are on every page, on every line. And keeping a copy of the OED handy won't hurt, either.

In my house Gravitys Rainbow is "The Good Book".
A work to be savoured while listening to Pink Floyd turned all the way up to "11" and injecting opium into your eyeballs. If you only read one book in your LIFETIME, this should be it. For me, the summer of '74 was Gravitys Rainbow. It was a very good summer. This isn't so much a book as an experience. I envy those of you who have the opportunity to read it for the first time. The investment of your precious time will be amply rewarded. The word "masterpiece" was invented to describe this monumental achievement. Yes, I liked it quite a bit

The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon
Published in Hardcover by University of Iowa Press (1988)
Author: David Seed
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A nice find
This book is helpful for people like me, who aren't searching for really deep and complex meanings in Pynchon's novels. This manages to not only demystify some of the complexities, it also helps to simply add some structure to the novels. The chapter on V was particularily helpful in just finding out what was going on, especially with Stencil's eight impersonations. A good place to start for those wondering more about Pynchon's novels...

The Grim Phoenix: Reconstructing Thomas Pynchon
Published in Textbook Binding by Indiana University Press (1978)
Author: William M., Plater
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A brilliant multidisciplinary analysis
William M. Plater, a respected Indiana academician and college dean, gives an amazing analysis of Pynchon's fiction up to and including Gravity's Rainbow (the book was written before Vineland and Mason & Dixon) using not only literary references, but philosophical, mathematical, sociological, and mythological as well. He references Pynchon back to some of his own source material such as The Education of Henry Adams and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He delves not so much into the structure of Pynchon's dense prose, but the reasons behind it, the ideas behind it, and where Pynchon resides in the mental and literary landscape. Plater outlines the major themes of Pynchon's fiction (eg, death transfigured, paranoia, reality and its projected image) and weaves them into a very readable and thought-provoking examination of the greatest American writer of the latter 20th century and certainly the archetype of postmodernism. If you read Pynchon, you should also read Plater.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel
Published in Paperback by Plume (06 May, 2003)
Authors: George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon, and Erich Fromm
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Fiction or Prophecy?
Winston Smith, member of the Outer Party, a small, petty cog in the great machination of "Big Brother", tries to step out from the shadow of his life in George Orwell's now masterpiece, "1984". Written over 50 years ago, this book was to serve several purposes, one being a warning to the present that a future like this, however fantastic and unbelievable, could be in the making should we allow for it to happen.

Winston leads the dull life of a worker, not encouraged to think, or dream, for feel for himself. His whole life must be driven to support the Party, which promulgates an apparent non-entity Big Brother as the supreme one. Winston early on shows the spark of individuality that the Party so wants to extinguish; by daring to write a journal on his own, he seals his fate early in the story. Soon he meets Julia, another worker, who charms and dares him even further to enocurage having an affair. Together they make a lethal pair, and some lethal decisions, which leads to the great climax in the Ministry of Love.

What lies in the story is an amazing prophecy of government gone mad. The Party believes in creating present truths by writing and rewriting the past on its whim. The Party understands in order to control the people, it must control the language, thereby, creating "Newspeak". The Party makes people simply vanish, eradicating them from existance. The Party realizes the people who follow are merely plebians in society, and therefore, should be encouraged to not think for themselves. In fact, the Party is able to directly lie to the people, using "doublethink", where they say one thing but mean the other.

How much of Orwell's nightmare is something that can be true today? Do we have a government out of control, one that manipulates information for its own benefit, to justify war, ensure fear and terror reigns over the country; one that illegally detains people without trial, right to counsel, or even being charged with a crime; one that wants to extensively monitor our personal phone calls, e-mails, the books we check out of the library, the things we buy in stores. The dots are there to connect them; the challenge is, will you dare to do it, like Winston Smith dared?

I believe 1984 is ultimately a hopeful book. Orwell wants to challenge humanity, that during times of crisis, we are able to rise up and change things, so the fateful prophecy so nobly and horrifyingly espoused in 1984 , will only stay between the covers of the book. The choice is up to us.

Pynchon and Mason & Dixon
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Delaware Pr (2000)
Authors: Brooke Horvath and Irving Malin
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Incredibly useful
As anyone that reads Pynchon novels can tell you, trying to get at all of the different potential readings of his novels can be downright difficult. If you snooze your way through a couple pages, you invariably are going to miss some of the sub-plots, or even keys to one of the on-going plots. Every novel of his that I finish, makes me realize that I need to go back and read with a different eye towards the actions and events of the text. To me, this is the mark of a great artist - enjoyable and rewarding every time, with something new to offer upon each successive return.

This companion collection of literary criticism regarding "Mason and Dixon", with contributions by some of the preeminent scholars on Pynchon, doubtless increased my enjoyment of the book several-fold on my first time through it. For that, even given the steep price, I have to heartily recommend this title. Since the novel itself takes over much of your life for an extended period of time, you may as well assign an appropriate level of importance to it and go for the highest level of comprehension that you can.

I know with absolute certainy that when I go back for a second read of "Mason & Dixon," that this book will be my map towards a more detailed reading.

Here are a list of the papers included:

"Foreshadowing the Text," Irving Malin

"Mason & Dixon in the Zone, or, A Brief Poetics of Pynchon-Space," Brian McHale

"'Cranks of Ev'ry Radius': Romancing the Line in 'Mason & Dixon'," Arthur Saltzman

"Thomas Pynchon and the Fault Lines of America," Donald J. Greiner

"Mapping the Course of Empire in the New World," David Seed

"Dimming the Enlightenment: Thomas Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon'," Victor Strandberg

"The Sound of One Man Mapping: Wicks Cherrycoke and the Eastern (Re)solution," Joseph Dewey

"Reading at the 'Crease of Credulity'," Bernard Duyfhuizen

"Historical Documents Relating to 'Mason & Dixon'," David Foreman

"Plucking the American Albatross: Pynchon's Irrealism in 'Mason & Dixon'," Jeff Baker

"Plot, Ideology, and Compassion in 'Mason & Dixon'," Thomas H. Schaub

"'Mason & Dixon' Bibliography," Clifford S. Mead

A Reader's Guide to Gravity's Rainbow
Published in Textbook Binding by Ardis Publishers (1980)
Author: Douglas Fowler
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This early key is a great help to understanding GR.
This early response to Gravity's Rainbow is an indispensable help to understanding that novel. The research is meticulous and original; the syntheses quite brilliant; and the one author's respect for the other makes for a delightful read.

The Teachings of Don B.: Satires, Pardies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme
Published in Paperback by Vintage Books (1998)
Authors: Donald Barthelme, Kim Herzinger, and Thomas Pynchon
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Playing the B-sides
The critical consensus on Donald Barthelme is that he basically reinvented the short story during his lifetime (he died in 1989). While there is some exaggeration involved in this assessment -- at times, Barthelme seems to be doing nothing much more than channeling Kafka -- his work is unique, inventive, and experimental in the best sense of the word. The present collection contains many of his occasional and "lighter" works. A number of them, for example, originally appeared as unsigned pieces in "The New Yorker". If the collections "Sixty Stories" and "Forty Stories" can be seen as Barthelme's greatest hits, then "The Teachings of Don B." can be seen as the B-sides. The subtitle of the book calls this a collection of "satires, parodies, fables, illustrated stories, and plays," and the description fits. The title story is a send-up of Carlos Castenada's "Don Juan" books, and on the whole the volume is marked by a certain air of lightness and good humor. There is a stretch in the middle, consisting mainly of works that originally appeared between chapters in the book "Overnight to Many Distant Cities", that is somewhat slower and more ponderous than the surrounding text, but it doesn't last for long. Of particular interest are the illustrated stories, where the text is complimented by collages made from old photographs and illustrations, somewhat in the manner of the Surrealists. My only complaint about this book is the inclusion of three short plays at the end. While interesting, they don't quite mesh with the rest of the volume, and could easily have been published on their own. The collection also features an introduction by Thomas Pynchon, which in itself it worth the price of admission.

Funny, sad, inoculating, irritating
With the possible exception of Thomas Pynchon, there isn't a writer around, living or dead (that I know of--I haven't read them all), who gives us a funnier, more accurate understanding of the absurdity of late twentieth-century existence than Barthelme, and it's good to have these previously uncollected pieces in one volume. The quality of this book is, I believe, remarkably even, but some pieces hit me harder than others. No one could have written "Here's the Ed Sullivan Show" but DB; what an eye the guy had!

Read this book (or SIXTY STORIES or SNOW WHITE) and you will not be able to look at the world in the same way again. DB knew better than most what petty, unexamined, selfish lives we live (but this is not to say that DB was mean spirited). Does he give solutions? Sort of, but not solutions that I am capable of paraphrasing. There may be readers for whom DB's teachings will seem pointless and not worth the trouble. (To them I say, "Back to your Grisham and Steele!") But for most of the rest of us--as bombarded as we are with insulting campaign pitches, thisandthat.com (!) ads, news of how the market is making us all wealthy, endless blockbuster film versions of mediocre TV shows, more tripe about what a great president Reagan was and on and on--DB can function as a sort of philosophical ophtalmologist with a rare antidote that will both make us laugh at and feel a bit grim about our consumer society.

Incredibly funny
I have never read anything this hilarious. It's perfectly balanced, too: Barthelme never goes too far or too short. Also get the "40 Stories" which in my opinion are much better than the 60.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me
Published in Paperback by Penguin Books (1983)
Authors: Richard Farina, Richard Fariina, and Thomas Pynchon
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Been Around So Long It's A Part Of Me
I read this book in one sitting the day that it hit the bookstores. Being a fan of Farina's music, I had anxiously awaited its publication, The first edition, which I have read over a half dozen times (about once a decade after three readings in it's year of pubication,) sits on my bookshelf next to his posthumously published Long Time Coming And A Long Time Gone. They are a part of the cornerstone of my Modern American Fiction collection. Since I still have my first edition, I have never read the Pynchon introduction. Farina must have known something as the book's opening quotation from Benjamin Franklin is " I must soon quit the scene." Farina died on the day of the autographing party for this book. Bottom line, it is a wonderful read. It is a portrait of the time, yet transends that time in many ways. If you do not find wonder in this book, there is something that you just do not get. I still mourn his death and all the music and prose that he did not write. So many talented people leave us too soon.

Should be required reading for all Ivy Leaguers
I read this book more than a year before I found myself attending grad school at Yale - and am I ever glad I did! I picked it up knowing nothing about the book itself, being familiar with Farina only as a songwriter, and when I saw that it was set in the fifties I knew I'd either love it or hate it. Luckily, this book presents the fifties in the eye of one who actually lived through them and knew there was more to that decade than poodle skirts and "Ozzie and Harriet." Indeed, as Thomas Pynchon's great introduction explains, Farina himself epitomized many of the changes the fifties saw, setting the stage for the following decade that has ever since overshadowed it. Of course Farina never tells the reader that he's setting out to chronicle the crumbling of traditional Ivy League culture into the rebelliousness that was about to emerge on campuses anywhere - he just does it. Anyone with a streak of Gnossos in him or her who has spent any time in any of the older Northeastern universities and colleges will recognize the mixture of pride, love and isolation he exhibits throughout the book. And they'll be glad he came before. If you've outgrown "The Catcher in the Rye," you owe it to yourself to read this!

Farina's Timeless Classic: A Reflection in a Crystal Dream
Richard Farina was a consummate songerwriter, poet and hopeful novelist, until his first and only novel burst onto the scene. Although a later book was released that was a compilation of some short stories, poems, and articles about him, this was the only book he had to stretch toward the literary heavens with. And it was indeed a smash!

Unfortunately, Farina, who was married to Joan Baez' younger sister Mimi, with whom he had forged a folk duo that played and recorded some of his wonderful poetry put to music, never lived to experience his own wild success, as he fell off the back of a motorcycle on the way home from the publication party for this book, and was killed instantly. But the book lives, indeed it flourishes, and the paperback version has never been out of print in all this time, which is ample testimony to its continuing power, verve, and its timeless message, as well as to its beautifully written story.

This is a wonderful book, one that has grown in reputation and stature over the intervening decades, and as another, much younger reviewer commented, it is one for everyone, not just for us greying babyboomers who were lucky enough to have discovered and experienced Richard in his prime. For all of us who have read his work, or listened to his music, or experienced his poetry, or for those of us who were lucky enough to see Mimi and Richard perform at the Newport Folk Festival, one can still hear the faint echoes of their haunting guitar harmonies and vocals, and we truly know that he is still with us. We know that he has truly left us a present, his evocative "reflections in a crystal dream".

Although set in a time before the changes of the sixties started to roar, one soon recognizes teh signs and spirit of the times in his words and the storyline. Enter Gnossos, soul of the road, keeper of the eternal flame, and a pilgrim on an endless search for the holy grail of cool, and the college town of Athene (read Ithaca, NY, home of Cornell) will never be the same. Nor will you after digesting this wild, extremely readable parable. So, friend, don't hesitate; buy it, read it, but do so slllllloooooowwwwwllllly, savoring every gorgeous moment of it. It's all we have left of him, the only legacy of an incredible talent and a wonderful spokesperson for the otherwise indescribable sixties.

Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler
Published in Paperback by Grove Press (1998)
Authors: Jim Dodge and Thomas Pynchon
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The Book So Good, I Co-opted the Title as My Alias
There are few more enjoyable pleasures in this world than being caught completely off-guard by a novel. I picked up STONE JUNCTION at a discount book sale, drawn in by the jacket, and the price. I began reading it with absolutely no preconceived notions as to its content, or worth.

By the end of the story, I knew that this was my favorite novel of all time.

It's the story of Daniel Pearce, an orphaned youngster who is brought under the guidance of some of the most off-kilter and bizarre people imaginable. While this may reek of HARRY POTTER, this is most assuredly a story for adults.

STONE JUNCTION is about the world behind the world, the people we sledom get to know. It is a world of crime, and conspiracies, and greed, and love, and magic. That author Jim Dodge holds it all together is a fine feat in and of itself, but he does more than that; he makes the reader yearn for this life. Although (in my edition) he states emphatically that the novel is a work of fiction ("Believe otherwise at your peril"), Dodge's world is so well-defined that it's difficult not to wish it existed.

The novel also has that one remaining aspect that so many novels, even the truly great ones, lack; it left me wanting more.

Fantastic Read
STONE JUNCTION is one of those books where you never know what is going to happen next. It's best to read it without knowing anything about it beforehand so you can charge through it wildly, marveling at this author's vivid imagination. The story takes a mother, her son, and a group of diverse characters all over the US on an outrageous scheme. It is described as an alchemical potboiler, which it clearly is, so expect magical and inexplicable events. I found this book in London where one of the staff from the bookstore had recommended it. I'm so glad!

What a read!
Jim Dodge spins a master American tale that starts with the warning..."This book is fiction, believe otherwise at you own peril." By the time your done you'll be searching high and low for any evidence of existence of the "AMO"(Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws). This is the path of a young boy raised by the aforementioned underground "alliance". As he spends time with various members of the AMO, he learns and masters that person's special skill or quality; the characters that are developed are so real and fascinating, you hate to close the book; The ending is from left field, but who cares; the time spent getting there was so phenominal that it doesn't effect the overalll rating of the book one smidge.

A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
Published in Paperback by University of Georgia Press (1988)
Author: Steven C. Weisenburger
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