Not P but Solenoid. (I so want to read this but who has enough time?)

[David Morris]

My ears always perk up when a Reviewer extols the extreme, exquisite
quality of an author’s writing. I find the extended prose poetry of
Pynchon’s writing to be its finest virtue, almost completely apart from any
narrative story. Almost like the insertion a song in the middle of a
musical film or play: a conscious heavy dose of poetic imagery.

Separate from the beauty of the writing are the constructs of reality, and
the various levels in which the writer is acknowledging (even winking) at
the fact that he’s as an author, creating an artificial world that is apt
to be full of darkness and deceit and things that aren’t true.

The author becomes a trickster, making layered constructions of “reality”
into a puzzle game for the reader. Paranoia trope seems like an endless
ride made more unpleasant by ever deeper versions of “gotcha!” Why, then,
is paranoia, considered a high level of satire among critics?

Paranoia’s rabbit hole potentially is one’s own navel.  COL49 is one of my
least favorite novels by P.

On Sat, Dec 3, 2022 at 8:23 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> this novel, anti-novel, getting incredible attention and
> this from a fine NYT review I post because part of Pynchon
> is that ole paranoia rag:
>
> He practices a sweeping solipsism that makes of paranoia a kind of
> totalizing faith. Every event, image or experience, whether common or
> outlandish, throbs with sinister meaning. Objects and memories from
> childhood bloom with late, apocalyptic significance in adulthood. Dreams
> contain legible clues for the arresting puzzles of waking life. This is the
> world as pure conspiracy, a web of impossibly esoteric interconnection. The
> book’s maximalism is no mere formalist tic, then, but a matter of
> necessity. Only a novel so sprawling, so unexpected, so incongruous could
> house such a sublime neurosis.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>