L'incanto del lotto 49

so imagine you're browsing through a bookstore on a lazy saturday afternoon. you stop in the pynchon section, and there, out of the corner of your eye, you see this *guy* and he's checking you out. you think, wow! this is one for the movies! does this actually happen? (this is a sexually oriented bi Leggi tutto

Appetite for Deconstruction Most readers approach a complex novel, like a scientist approaches the world or a detective approaches a crime - with an appetite for knowledge and understanding, and a methodology designed to satiate their appetite. “The Crying of Lot 49” (“TCL49”) presents a challenge to Leggi tutto

The kind of book that makes people hate books. Literally one of, if not, the worst story I've ever read. A classic English majors only book, aka people like talking about this book and that they "get it" make you feel like their intellectual inferior. This book is the literary equivalent of some hip Leggi tutto

The world is full of signs and symbols and emblems and omens… One just should learn to read them… Beneath the notice, faintly in pencil, was a symbol she'd never seen before, a loop, triangle and trapezoid. “The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven…” Revelation 11:15 Leggi tutto

“This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl.” Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 is not for everyone (mostly I know this because I’ve recommended this book before and been dismayed when it was not loved). I do, however, get a lot of comments on my W.A.S.T.E. t-shirt. I’ve Leggi tutto

The book version of the 1997 movie The Game by Michael Douglas Imagine spending a quiet evening at home with your significant other when the phone rings informing you that your former love, Pierce Inverarity, has died. He has appointed Y-O-U to gather his assets under the terms of his will. Except (s Leggi tutto

Y'know I feel sorry for Pynchon. He's gained a reputation as a 'difficult writer'. This problem plagues Faulkner as well. People go into Pynchon's and Faulkner's novels and quickly realise that things happen very differently in here and thus, unnerved by the shock of the new, hastily retreat. It's a Leggi tutto

Brief thoughts after a 2nd reading: Even better than I remembered. Having a thematic understanding already allowed me to focus on the literal plot of Oedipa's wild travels among crazy characters - often laugh out loud funny - then return to consider how these settings and contrivances serve a symboli Leggi tutto

Y’all like paranoia?