It's a strange book, sure, but it's far from the impenetrable thing people make it out to be. It possibly seems that to people who take it too seriously, who think everything in it must be a reference to something else, and every scene and character is part of some larger whole beyond their comprehension.
Now, there are a lot of references to other things - sure - and deeper meanings to be found if you search for them - yeah, and some of it's pretty cool - but I also think Pynchon gets overanalysed. I suspect he's just having fun a lot of the time, and a lot of it isn't really supposed to make sense on any kind of complex level.
Relax, just let it happen, accept you aren't going to be able to keep track of it all, and it's not so difficult. After you've read Gravity's Rainbow , I'd suggest Vineland as your next stop. Well because it's just so not Gravity's Rainbow. Where Gravity's Rainbow is long, fast-paced, complex, and deals with characters lost in the chaos of the wider world, Vineland is comparatively slow and gentle, and deals more intimately with individuals.
Its characters feel more real, and the world they inhabit - though still strange - feels more like our own. I think once you've read these two, the order of your remaining reading won't matter too much.
You'll have a good feel for the spectrum of emotions that Pynchon likes to take his readers through, and hopefully you'll have developed a taste for it, too. If so, pick one at random, or one you like the sound of, and read on.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What order should I read Thomas Pynchon's novels in? Vineland Northern California and America in the early s. Big pop culture and literary hits and again most people should be able to get the refs. Lot 49 , Inherent Vice , Vineland and Bleeding Edge form a kind of paranoid alternative history contemporary quartet that should be accessible to most general readers.
Vineland is a fun novel that travels all the way from slapstick falls through windows to scary Reagan era spook fuck you dudes who make Clarence Beeks from Trading Places look like the saintly Denholm Elliot from Trading Places. His best book? Probably, yes. And just to warn you, amidst the humour and horror there is war and violent death and a pretty gross scene involving coprophilia.
Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. So here are my suggestions for starting places for Pynchon. Vintage UK trade paperback edition Cover by Paul Burgess. Like this: Like Loading Published by Biblioklept. The other novels are too Pynchon-y for anyone not already converted to the PPP group membership.
A delight. Your thoughts? This is the rap, and there is some truth to it. But it's not the whole truth, not nearly. As one seasoned reader of Pynchon put it, "difficult, schmifficult! To plunge down the rabbit hole of Pynchon's fiction is to commence a journey into another world, a world infused with magic and mystery, a wonderfully labyrinthine world where "real" history and fiction intersect and dissolve into dream.
Thomas Pynchon projects a world, and so does the reader. This provides, as another long-time fan expressed it, "the tremendous pleasure bestowed on the reader of being in on a joint venture of a sort. However, in spite of the faux modesty of this advice, Pynchon is a notoriously "difficult" writer.
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