I've read the first third of the book, at some point I'll make another attempt. Pynchon's writing style is rather interesting in that reading it, for me at least, requires dedicated concentration for multiple pages until the point when I get 'sucked into' the book and then it flows. The only person I know that has read through it did so on a road trip and just plowed through without trying to make sense of entire chapters.
Gravity's Rainbow is also more challenging because it spans a lot of different characters and subplots. The Crying of Lot 49 is much easier, and Vineland is an aberration. I know one person who thinks that Pynchon hired a ghost writer for Vineland because the writing style is so different.
Yeah, my problem was that I'd get into the flow when there was action and things happening, and then zone out during the more descriptive/sensationalist passages, but not zone back in until I'd missed a bunch more action.
I tried just reading it without worrying if I was zoning in and out but I found that I was missing so much that it wasn't holding my interest.
I loved the book when I was able to really sit and focus hard on what I was reading but at the moment most of my reading happens in bed as I'm falling asleep and it's just not the kind of book that works for me for that kind of reading. Hopefully some day.
Quite a few years later I tried "Mason & Dixon" in English and gave up after maybe 20 pages. I bought the german translation and gave up after maybe 50 pages.
And this suggests an interesting thought experiment in human comprehensibility. Does there exist some media where a totally ignorant analysis becomes more compelling once you have actually experienced the media being analyzed versus before you have experienced the media.
On the other hand, I do think it's likely to be high on the list of books most admired by people that read about it instead of reading it...
(Atlas Shrugged is another. In certain business and political circles, the book about the business leaders going on strike to prove how much value they really create sounds like the one you want to cite as your inspiration, but whenever you open it, it just seems like 1000 pages of weirdness about trains, philosopher pirates and genius scions of self-made conquistadors peddling stock scams as an unlikely act of heroism, with drive-by digs at Christianity, marital fidelity and nuclear weapons and an 80 page speech in which the world is inoculated against socialism by the revelation that 'A is A'.
Bet there's lots of high fantasy lovers that loved works influenced by LOTR but never quite got past Tom Bombadil in the actual book too, but then there's others that will know the appendices off by heart!)
It’s a horribly written book that also I didn’t finish, but at least it’s ideology also goes a bit against the people that think it’s about them not getting enough.
tolkien, on the other hand, i found so boring as to never have been able to finish even a fraction of any of his books.
Knowing the general plot from the movie makes reading everything that happens in between the major story beats much more interesting since I have a sense of where in the story we are. It’s also fun to notice the differences when they adapted the story for the screen.
I’ve also told my son the general plot several times beforehand (when he wanted me to tell him a story and I couldn’t think of any other) and I think he’s much more into it because of that as well. He knows where we are overall and what generally comes next.
It then boggled my mind when I learned that people take this seriously. And it means something. Rather than it just being a work of fiction.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment. But if you haven't read The Fountainhead and you can mentally distance yourself from the political side of everything around it, it's worth a read.
(Saying that as someone who read The Lord Of The Rings and thought it was okay but couldn't get through The Simarillion because it was just a bit too odd)
In the end I often compare her to Marx. Both were great critics but their work breaks down when you get to the “and then what” part. And then… magic happens and utopia! You just need the enough unicorns.
Followers of these two tend to criticize a lot. Marxists can pen deep critiques of capitalism and Randians of socialism. But they start sounding magical when it comes to solutions.
I’ve come to be skeptical of criticism and its value. Doing things is way harder than criticizing them.
One of my professors in grad school was extremely liberal but loved Fountainhead and would defend it on the rare occasions that it came up.
Oh yes, that describes it perfectly! Thanks for mentioning it, for some reason that makes me feel much better about the whole thing.
I can appreciate the Lotr film trilogy as a fun war epic. And the cavalry charge was filled to the brim, with a kind of grace.
Opened Atlas Shrugged and a couple pages in, instantly knew I would intensely 'unenjoy' that book. There is a sharp, weaponized dryness to her style of writing. I watched a documentary about her life later on and her troubled love life made an equal amount of sense.
The Fountainhead made a good film though. The emphasis on excellence and images of skeletal verticality were fun. I am guessing cutting down her books to fit a film length helped to make a more friendly viewing experience.
(I think it's probably less disconcerting to people whose introduction to Tolkein was the tweeness of the Hobbit rather than Peter Jackson's films and high fantasy in general)
Now I can appreciate it a bit more, knowing something about Tolkein's 'faith' and the connections he was making. The cheesy, soppy-and-sternness is not so bad with a deeper understanding.
I should probably go finish it.