New Member/Question

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

All good responses below. My stepbrother had a copy of V. lying around, I'd pick 
it up from time to time, dazzled by these o.t.t. blurbs on the back cover. I 
found "suck hour" a hoot, but the rest was all mighty obscure. I'd pick up 
Gravity's Rainbow, after it started to appear on supermarket book displays, and 
look for a passage, see if I could get in. Also taken by the even more O.T.T. 
blurbs on the back. Then in 1979, retrieved a mass market (it was one that used 
to have the Oedipa-a-Go-Go cover) of The Crying of Lot 49 from the trash of the 
bookstore where I worked. I was pulled along into the story in a way that never 
happened with V., in large part because the places he was describing as the 
various backdrops for Oedipa's haunting/reckoning were all places I've been, or 
could have been at or were typically Californian simulacra of places I've been. 
So, in some meaningful way, the story of COL49 related to my own life. Of 
course, the California backdrop also was centered on the two towns where the 
hard-boiled Dick genere had its first, possibly best appearance. There was 
Dashiell Hammett's  'Frisco, but even more there was Raymond Chandler's 
infinitely corruptible L.A.. While Pynchon doesn't wallow in the procedural 
niceties of the genre, he doesn't ignore them either. Which is why, when you 
land on a final page that promises revelation, but stops just short, you end up 
needing to re-read, which I did, over and over. A year later (after getting 
front to back with COL 49 about ten times) I took on Gravity's Rainbow. That's 
another book that demands re-reading, looking for what was missing, what was 
overlooked, what might be hidden, questing for the source of the promised 
revelation, hoping for illumination but dreading it too.


           Charles Albert:
           I'd second starting with COL49......with 
           V as an alternative choice....

           Neither represent "the zip line" of his collection, 
           but offer great effort/reward ratios....and you 
           will be thoroughly initiated after doing so...... 

           Matt Rhodes:

           I am a new member to this list, and in fact to 
           Pynchon's writing.  What would folks recommend 
           as my first read?  I've heard that Lot 49 is a good 
           one to start with, but I'm stubborn enough to try 
           and tackle Gravity's Rainbow first (even though 
           I've heard it's a difficult read).  Suggestions?

           Tore Rye Andersen: 
           My first encounter with Pynchon was with 
           Gravity's Rainbow. I hadn't heard much about 
           Pynchon beforehand, so I plunged into the novel 
           without any of the nervous caution that more 
           informed readers approach Gravity's Rainbow with - 
           and I haven't surfaced since. The sensible advice 
           would probably be to read Lot 49 first, before 
           tackling any of the larger novels, but heck: I'd say 
           let your stubbornness do the talking and plunge 
           head first into Gravity's Rainbow. It worked for me.