Rudy Rucker on Pynchon

[Ya Sam]

RU: Before I let you go I want to ask you one more question. It’s the same 
question that I asked Cory Doctorow on The R.U. Sirius show a couple of 
weeks ago. Your thought processes in your material is very science 
fiction-y. What novels outside of the science fiction genre do you read, and 
what do you really love?

RR: Well, recently I was re-reading some of the stories by Luis Borges. He’s 
maybe my favorite writer of all. Just this week I’m reading a book by 
Charles Portis called Gringos. That’s a really great book. It came out in 
the nineties. It’s really fun to read. A bunch of hippies go down to Mexico 
for a harmonic convergence while the world’s coming to an end. The saucers 
are landing. The usual kind of thing. He has this very jaded, dry tone. And, 
of course, I’m also reading Pynchon’s new book, which seems like a drop-off 
in quality.

RU: Did you read Gravity’s Rainbow as soon as it came out?

RR: I did. I read it — I read it for about five years. I kept re-reading it. 
It had a huge influence on me. I learned a lot about writing from reading 
Pynchon. He’s such a beautiful stylist.

RU: It was very difficult to get started. I started it myself about four or 
five times before actually reading it all the way through. And I found that 
I had to make notes to read the entire book.

RR: Yeah. In a way it reproduced the experience of how you find out about 
things when you’re growing up. You get a piece here, a piece there, and it 
takes a while to fit it all together into the whole narrative.

RU: But you would love puzzle types of novelists.

RR: Up to a point I like puzzles, but I also like a story that keeps you 
turning the pages. Stories that kick ass. I don’t like to get too arty.

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/03/01/sf-writer-rudy-rucker-everything-is-computation/

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