The Crying of Lot 49

This was from 1966, and it’s really short, you can read it in like half an hour, so it’s the book that people trying to get into Thomas Pynchon first pick up—but that’s a mistake! Because it’s his most difficult of all his books! It seems to be about this woman Oedipa trying to settle the estate of this dead rich guy, and then she travels around California and runs into a lot of weirdo characters, but it’s anything but a simple story. It’s not a story at all, but a long series of paranoid delusions and urban legend that come to life, one inside another, that create an entire hallucinogenic, time warped landscape of a text!!!!!!

Toward the end there’s something about a “smiling billboard” – though I don’t remember the context—and that freaked me out because I had just read something that I wrote long before I read this book which had a reference to a “smiling billboard.” I know I couldn’t have stolen it—not from this book, because I hadn't read it—but maybe we BOTH stole it from the same source. If I could figure that out, maybe it would be a clue into the dude’s psyche!

The weirdest thing for me is that there is virtually no description of the main character, Oedipa, and because of her name I immediately thought of her as kind of old and fat--- the then eventually she starts having sex with everyone and there’s some indication that she’s in her TWENTIES—so it’s really confusing. Which makes you think that this character is really the first person, the Pynchon character, or at least the world is seen by P. thru her eyes. Anyway, the whole story revolves around this alternative, underground mail system, whose symbol has been said to look like a trumpet with a mute in it—that mute being the crucial symbolic element here. The secret here, which I discovered on my own, is that the symbol ALSO looks like a spray can for insecticide. That’s one thing you always have to remember with P’s novels, not only does everything mean something else, but it also means something ELSE completely different, and THAT means, as well, symbolically or metaphorically, something else besides. So good luck with this mess!

a kindread spririt overseas

Just found this on the WIde World Web!

http://www.benking.co.uk/blog/?p=106

Someone who loves both Pynchon and IKEA!

Are same sex marriages still legal in England?

Review of V. by Thomas Pynchon

Just finished reading V. by Thomas Pynchon, from 1963. here’s my review. Spoiler alert! Don’t blame me if I ruin it for you. The main character, Profane, is a sailor, naturally, and he’s the good guy. Stencil is his doppelganger, or evil side. Both of them spend the book looking for V, or “V”, which will bring them, you know, enlightenment, happiness, love, great riches, or whatever. The first place to look, naturally, is EVIL; you can’t ignore the v there! Then there are all the other V’s. Some of these are wild goose chases (or said by the one of the sinister German characters “VILD goose hunt”—of course there are a lot of Germans, ex-nazis, “var” criminals and such, and stuff about the V-1 and the V-2 missiles and their “wicious nature.” Is V the victory sign or the peace sign? That is the question! ON the way, like I was saying, there are a lot of false leads, but that’s the point, red herrings, with coleslaw and what’s that white shit that goes with fish. IT’s Friday, and every Friday here in Schaumberg I think about going to a FISH fry, because I used to live in MILWAuKEE. There are no FISHFRYs in Schaumburg, only oven-fired pizza. Don’t worry the editor robot will remove all that. I need a cigarette—a ViceRoy! There is a VAST tobacco company conspiracy, and a vacuum cleaner salesman, Voss, and Vince Vaughn, a “voman” known to be a Virgin the last, in Virginia. Okay, viscidities vacillate and go Vroom! Very very very good VSOP brandy is drank. Don’t forget the roman number 5! Vacation from vector and Indian boy named Venkatesh, V carved in marble is actually U: (MVESEVM) A gimlet at Victor’s helps vacillate the Add Visory committee when asking for Ad*vice, use the Variable Symbol for image distance Or the Symbol for instantaneous potential difference or the Symbol for instantaneous voltage or the Symbol for specific volume try Vale and Vector main Vein terminal Velocity component and speed. Ventilator blues Ventral as a Verb, verbal Verse Versus Vertical plotline Via Vicarage in Vide paying the Violin with a Virus due to the Visibility of his Vision and the inevitability of his Vocative Voice at the rim of the Volcano, high Voltage Vowels Become Luminous with potential energy, and Potential efficiency and Potential Vanadium Variable regional Vats of Venerable Versions of Vespers who the Vicar of the Village and the Viscount Volunteer Victoria for, you know. Is V a cross or Vietcong? Is it Vapor density, various dates, or venereal disease? Is it the general Verb or intransitive or vide infra? With Vide supra and vice versa! Voucher attached for V-6 engine or V8 juice? Value added or value deleted analysis Or Ventricular arrhythmia Or Veterans’ administration or vicar apostolic or vice admiral OF Virginia Or Visual air Or voice of America only Volunteer artillery, nO! Vacancy forced Vaccination, homebound Vagabonds and reversed Vasectomy for Valentines Day. It’s all there, but the main thing is the women, the classic noir names: Velma And Vera who of course are Vicious and ever bit at viscous as they are Vast, and vacuous, and operating in a vacuum. But you CAN’T tell me in the END that V is anything but the Vagina. OK! It’s a fun book and a quick read, but don’t try to figure it out. It’s a can of VERMS.

Autograph SEEKERS Go Home!

My website started getting thousands of HITS, hundrends of thoussands, even... I couldn't fugre out why until I realized that it has the same name as this new novel that's coming out by that guy Thomas Pynchon, who I am familiar with, but I haven't read any of his books. I had no idea when I named it this! I mean, I came up with this name while eating a mushroom and peperoni pizza from Lou Malnati's along with some drugs that I'd reather not mention here and a vanilla bean and lingonberry ice cream martini from TJ Fudrucker's followed by Jaeger shots! I know: DUMB! So while puking my guts out I was kind of in a state of some kind of weird grace, eventually, and I thought, now would be the time to think of a name for my new BLOG, since here I am puking my guts out. I don't know, puke, blog, kind of the same thing. So I was trying to think of that expression for puking, but I couldn't think of it-- hurling, yeah, but no... the porcealon god, no, too religious, and I can't spell porciilarn... what was it?! I tell you I couldn't think of it, but what came to me was AGAINST THE DAY. I have no idea why that came to me, but it was like GOD put the words in my mind. Well, once I recovered, the the expresion I was trying to think of came to me finally: Driving The Big White Bus. Okay, but by that time, it didn't seem so charming anymore, and I didn't really want to name my blog THAT. SO I went with Against the Day. But I assure you... IT has abslolutly NOTHING to do with that Thomas Pynchon or his new book which I'm sure is more well written than what you read here. But do his characterers have philosophic forrays into the IKEA store? I doubt it. But maybe they do. Now I'm interested, kind of. SO what I'll do here is read all his books (THere are only a few, right? ) and then write little reveiws here of what I think, ending with the new one once it comes out. SO yeah, sorry to all of you who are coming to the blog in ERROR, it's just the kind of accident that happens in these days of so few words and so many people putting them into random senseless order.