authors

Thomas Pynchon

Jan 25, 2023 Bleeding Edge By Thomas Pynchon Quick (for Pynchon) fun (for Pynchon) jaunt through conspiratorial world of fresh-from-the-dot-com-collapse Silicon Alley, NYC; a modern take on film noir but like in books and also with computer stuff. A good mess to untangle with some snazzy characters and hijinks, the coarse barrage of people places and things might make you miss the fact that there are some pretty neat dynamics at play, insightful and honest! At his best, Pynchon falls into himself in a bit of an ouroboros of facts, figures, references, pedantry and pretension that goes for pages and pages and is...maybe...a bit tiresome actually - but this is perhaps not him at his best and instead just entertaining. I'll finish Gravity's Rainbow one of these days but in the meantime am happy to have found this one.
Jun 24, 2023 Inherent Vice By Thomas Pynchon When it comes down to it, this is basically just Bleeding Edge but with more Genre. Enjoyable enough as a detective mystery, and the counterculture voice is kind of fun - and, as I listened to the audiobook, Ron McLarty's performance of the various Pynchonian songs and lyrical tidbits (that I normally end up skimming over) was a delight. I was generally expecting more, but probably would make a good gateway novel by him.
Jun 24, 2023 Mason Dixon By Thomas Pynchon I think this is likely the best of Thomas Pynchon, one of the great novels of my lifetime, although I enjoyed his Bleeding Edge more. I don't know that I've read a better book that was written since I've been born. Better and good and great and enjoyable and exhilarating are all of course very different words, and it is for all of that not one of my favorite books, but. Masterful style, compelling history, quality story of Friendship and a pair in the lineage of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, awesome odyssey and the usual overbrimming of stories and side characters, framing devices and framed devices. It is, all in all, A Lot. But very good at it.
Jun 19, 2024 Against The Day By Thomas Pynchon