Guess you Had to be there

[rich]

All--

I think IV is best at giving a sense of place, there seems to be more
of an awareness unlike any of the previous books I would argue (If
Pynchon could recreate places he's never been so successfully one
can't be surprised at what he can do for places he's been in!)
Vineland has that, too but he's tackling a major American metropolitan
city this time out (landmarks are important, street names, freeways,
so forth)
and I think that's the problem for me--I never felt connected to this
book--it wasn't the lightness, the vulgarity, the cartoony goofballs,
the paranoia (hell, that's in all his books), the push pull of the
straight world and the counterculture...
I felt like an outsider, peering in. don't know if that makes a lick of sense.

still musing, more later perhaps
Rich

On 8/6/09, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey, Robin, what's all this about the CIA? How come you never mentioned this
> before?
>
>
> :-)
>
>
> Well now, for most people over this side of The Pond, places like New York
> resonate, whether you've been there or not, I mean you sort of think you
> know them, a bit, but L.A. (and California in general) is somewhere few of
> us have any real grasp of. I know nothing about the relative merits of Santa
> Monica or Malibu, etc etc. I appreciate how much extra frisson there was in
> Vineland for folks like Robin, but even without that the sense of place (and
> time) comes very strongly off the page, even for someone as know-nothing
> about L.A. as myself.
>
>
> Rich, I'm sure sorry you didn't enjoy IV. It's hard to know how you found it
> so bad that it was a struggle to finish it? What was your main problem? Too
> light? NOt enough 'typical Pynchon' in it? All those pussy jokes?
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Re: Guess you Had to be there
>> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 08:13:17 -0700
>>
>> On Aug 6, 2009, at 7:43 AM, rich wrote:
>>
>>> Finished IV this morning--I understand most here love the book and
>>> that's OK but I really didn't like it.
>>> I can give you reasons but what's the point. I'll just say maybe you
>>> had to be there. It was a struggle to finish
>>>
>>> maybe when i get my head straight I can elaborate a bit more
>>>
>>> rich
>>
>> You might be right.
>>
>> I was there. I seriously doubt I'd like Vineland nearly as much if it
>> wasn't as if Pynchon scripted my mother's life in the Green Triangle.
>> My Grandfather, who lived in Culver City, had a photo—not a print, a
>> photo— of the Spruce Goose. The presence of Howard Hughes' enterprises
>> were ubiquitous in and around L.A. when I was living down there. I
>> remember the TRW sign, I remember the ARPA sign. There's related CIA
>> material in Inherent Vice that corresponds closely with the CIA
>> material in The Crying of Lot 49. And I've always loved the Borgesian
>> confusion of Raymond Chandler's plots.
>>
>> Sorry you didn't like it.
>>
>>
>
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