I’m 100 pages in and it’s easily the best Pynchon I’ve ever read. I’ve always liked Pynchon, but never loved him.

This book has it all. It includes everything I love about Pynchon, the beautiful prose, the zaniness, and the clear but not preachy message.

However, it’s also free of all that I dislike about Pynchon. This time, the characters are genuinely multi dimensional. The character names are fun but not over the top. The structure is postmodern, but not for its own sake.

It's in the bottom half of my Pynch ranking because first of all it's more vignettes than plot and second of all Barth did it first and better

it's free on audible plus i was thinking about listening to it but i listen to vineland instead also free on audible plus since i already read vineland and forgot it all what's funny is how much vineland sounds like inherent vice when it's an audiobook.

i hate multidimensional characters thats normie slop.

does it have less songs at least? pynchon songs are fucking awful and on audiobook physically cringe.

>>24467457
You sound like a horrible person to be around

>>24467464
you sound like a chick

>>24467474
I said what I said

>>24467446 (OP)
been meaning to check this out. Might move it on deck.

>>24467446 (OP)
I think pynchon is just mediocre as a whole

>>24467457
yet another post for the 'audiobook enthusiasts are retards' pile

>>24467604
yo i read inherent vice and gr as regular books i just listen to the audiobooks for the kino of george giudall saying "oh shit sez slothrop"

>>24467446 (OP)
M&D has to have my favorite book cover ever just cause it looked like somebody fucked up designing it and made the text too big and then put a cardboard colored background. Shits awesome

>Sotweed Factor except trash and typeset 40% larger than necessary for brickcels to feel embiggened

>>24467608
>cardboard colored background
uhh that's how old as books look bro u never seen a book from the 1700s or some shit?

>>24467630
Yeah I know but I haven't made this connection before with those types of books. Its just this book specifically with the browns not being consistent throughout the whole cover. Its hard to explain but like the nuances for the very fine details in relation to the color makes it look like cardboard to me

>>24467563
Well, that is demonstrably false. Any other really stupid takes?

>>24467563
but every high schooler just getting into literature has to go through their pynchon phase; it’s like a rite of passage

>>24467622
>Sotweed Factor
I'm reading this rn and its very good. I feel stupid aince I only heard about it a few weeks ago.
As for M&D... Dont we think Against The Day is better?

>>24467685
I would wager no more than 2% of high schoolers read.

As an ESL I feel kinda proud about having read M&D in English and being able to consider it one of the best things I've read.
Other English written books whose meaning and depth probably flew over my Spanish head are Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest and currently Suttree.

>>24467673
Is it false? Demonstrably? What’s the appeal?

>>24467455
>it's more vignettes than plot
Except theres always a real tangible sense of progression throughout the novel, more so than pretty much any other Pynchon book. There's hardly any digressions in the same way GR or V. or even Vineland have them (outside the Eliza Fields episode), and the anecdotal asides we do get are extremely pertinent to M&D's themes and how they develop as the story continues.

>>24467961
Suttree is intense even for us unilinguals

>>24467457
>I hate multidimensional characters that's Normie slop.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you're a nigger faggot bud... Kill yourself faggot nigger, I don't even know what to say to you except for that, kill yourself fag gay nigga

>>24467673
You're smart. There you go
>>24467685
I did. But that was 10 years ago. Now i can't stan his extremely juvenile writing. Pynchon is "literature" for 19 year old white males who have just outgrown Grant Morrison

>>24467622
Would sot weed factor be a good book for someone who only reads non fiction with the exception of the gambler by dosto and Tolstoy

>>24468317
Barth is pretty shit so don't go with your hopes up

>>24467446 (OP)
dunno, couldn't get into it, probably because of the strange wanna-be 18th century prose
also I'm ESL so there's that too

>son & xon

>>24468329
>wanna-be 18th century prose
Supposedly it’s extremely accurate to the writing style of the time.

>>24468329
Literally a higher literary peak than current century.

>>24468336
I think that every time I see the cover. Like a glitchy riff on those ___ & Sons businesses.

ok so i listened to the audiobook last night when i went to bed and it appears to just be hours and hours of "witty" banter. what am i listening to a fucking screenplay? what is this shit? gr is one of the most slammin books of all time, but this is like "ok".

>>24468554
read Rabelais, Sterne, and Swift first. then you'll understand

>>24468558
it's actually a pomo rip-off of this too bad barthe did it first

>>24468566
I forgot only one writer is able to make a claim on any given topic
Also the Pennsylvaniad in M&D literally tells the reader this, he's basically telling you it's spoofing the Sot Weed Factor.

>>24468578
wow so he's literally admitted he's ripping off barth? bloom said "the daemon" or whatever left pynchy with against the day but i say whatever "it" is was gone by the time vineland dropped

>>24468558
>DR. Slop was within an ace of being an exception to all this argumentation: for happening to have his green baize bag upon his knees, when he began to parody my uncle Toby—’twas as good as the best mantle in the world to him: for which purpose, when he foresaw the sentence would end in his new-invented forceps, he thrust his hand into the bag in order to have them ready to clap in, when your reverences took so much notice of the ***, which had he managed——my uncle Toby had certainly been overthrown: the sentence and the argument in that case jumping closely in one point, so like the two lines which form the salient angle of a ravelin,——Dr. Slop would never have given them up;—and my uncle Toby would as soon have thought of flying, as taking them by force: but Dr. Slop fumbled so vilely in pulling them out, it took off the whole effect, and what was a ten times worse evil (for they seldom come alone in this life) in pulling out his forceps, his forceps unfortunately drew out the squirt along with it.

>When a proposition can be taken in two senses—’tis a law in disputation, That the respondent may reply to which of the two he pleases, or finds most convenient for him.——This threw the advantage of the argument quite on my uncle Toby’s side.—“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”

lmao tristram shandy actually has a dude called dr. slop lmao sterne certified fire lmao peep the above prose fr

>>24468591
It's spoofing Ebenezer Cooke's Sot Weed Factor you dolt.
And M&D has some of the most sublime prose in the English language. The entire St. Helena section, the start of the Eliza Fields section, the interim before they set out for America, even the opening paragraphs, are just teeming with intricacy, precision, and beauty. Barth's Sot Weed Factor and M&D have completely different aims and different vectors and angles by which they work towards providing different commentaries. Gaddis and Joyce also had numerous points of intersection regarding the topics they explored in their respective bodies of work. DFW and DeLillo. Pynchon and Vollmann. If anything it's fantastic that a common base of inspiration can produce two phenomenal works of art like Barth's Sot Weed and M&D
Against the Day was also fantastic.

>>24468591
It’s a homage not a rip-off. It’s pretty obvious what Pynchon is doing if you’re familiar with this tradition of fiction.

>>24468591
Bloom also said you can only understand Shakespeare if you're jewish and that the Bible was written by a woman. Make of that what you will.

>>24467457

You sound completely retarded, so I think that there's your problem.

>>24468317
i doubt it. it's a very silly novel — if you have a boner about only reading Serious Books for Serious People you will be very upset

>>24468317
not at all lol

>>24467446 (OP)
The hardcover of that book was all over the place for super cheap just after it came out. I never picked it up and I regret it to this day.

>>24471393
Namaste. There is no need to regret things for so long you can just pick up a copy on ebay for not that much money and put it behind you.

>>24467455
Are you referring to The Sot-Weed Factor?

ive read most of pynchon's books but im going to skip this one

>>24472077
This is literally his crowning achievement and magnum opus

>>24467446 (OP)
It's trying too hard to be "muh great American novel." The book is obvious prizebait. And the author seems to be on auto-pilot at times. Its Pynchon-by-numbers.
Read V or Gravity's Rainbow instead.

>>24472406
>It's trying too hard to be "muh great American novel."
? Like 350 pages of its 770 pages arent even set in America

>>24467446 (OP)
>never loved him
>includes everything I love about [him]

>>24467446 (OP)
It's too long

>>24473213
So what? Less than a fifth of Moby Dick is set in America.

>>24467446 (OP)
What even is this

>>24475003
bruh

I can’t believe 4chan took away the “unique users in thread” counter. I’m going to guess that this thread has about 4 schizos.