i'm new

[Craig Clark]

adrienne closes her first posting to the list by saying:
> Sorry for all of the questions...I just am really intrigued by Pynchon's 
> writing as well as his hidden life.  Any information or answers you could 
> give would be most helpful.
I don't think you need to apologise - that's what the Pynchon-list is 
all about, questions (and answers) about the greatest novelist of all 
time (well, IMHO at least).

> ..[snip]..  I'm sort of trying to decide what to read next.

I suggest, in light of what you have written elsewhere, that you 
actually have another stab at _Lot 49_. It is a damn bewildering 
book, no doubt about it (and at that, one of TRP's simpler texts...), 
and one which I think could bear a lot more discussion on this list. 
Yes, it does (IMHO) epitomise Pynchon's work, and treats of most of
his usual themes: entropy, paranoia, politics, the interconnectedness 
(or lack thereof) of our universe, flows of information, history, drugs,
religious experience... the list is getting frighteningly long already, and I'm 
sure others will want to add to it or debate some of my inclusions.

I found that it took 3 readings to get a sense of what the novel was 
doing, and that today, about 10 readings behind me, I'm still only 
scratching the surface.

Then have a go at _Vinelands_, another reasonably accessible book 
(and one of which I am not overfond. Watch me get flamed for 
asserting this and _Vinelands_'s accessibility!) Try the short 
stories in _Slow Learner_, and then, having dealt with the "minor" 
works, have a go at _V._, which will fry your brains, and then at the 
stupefying and amazing _Gravity's Rainbow_. Alternatively try 
reading _GR_ now and just accept that hereafter everything you read, 
even _V._,  will seem a bit pallid...

> I noticed that the muted post horn and WASTE are used a lot on one 
> of the Pynchon pages, are these things used in his other books?  Other 
> than what they meant in the story, why are they so used by Pynchon fans?

Neither the muted horn nor the WASTE acronym appear again: a number 
of characters from _Lot 49_ do reappear in other works, however. 
Speaking personally, I used to write WASTE and DEATH and draw 
posthorns on toilet walls many years ago because I got a kick out of 
knowing that they'd perplex the hell out of nearly everyone who saw 
one, except for a special few, members of a secret fraternity or 
sorority if you like, who'd read the book (actually, I first 
encountered the Horn in the toilets at the English Dept at Natal 
University a year before I read _Lot 49_).

>Are any of these things true facts? I mean was there ever a Thurn and
>Taxis or a play called The Courier's Tragedy?  
The Thurn and Taxis courier service existed, as I understand much as 
the novel suggests, and the Thurn and Taxis family still 
exists as a bunch of very wealthy socialites... Wharfinger and his 
play are both fictions (or so I am led to believe - and anyone who 
asserts otherwise may have to produce an authentic orginal folio 
edition to convince me), but the Remedios Varo paintings described in 
the novel are not; and I recall once seeing a brochure put out by a right-wing
book-order company who offered to send the books by their own special
courier service if you didn't want to use the US Mail because it was 
a government monopoly and therefore socialist (a la Peter Pinguid 
Society).

> I wonder, is this intentional? Does he do this to make the reader feel
>just as lost and confused as Oedipa?
In my opinion, the answer to both these questions is "yes." And 
that's one of the great pleasures of reading Pynchon, and one of the 
things you must get used to if you're going to explore his work 
further: I do not believe it is possible to capture the full richness 
of a Pynchon novel on a single read. there will always be things 
unexplained and unexplainable. Rather like the real world, in fact.


 

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"