Jim Ruland in Alta writes: "“For the old guard,” Carswell explained, “Pynchon was validation for literary criticism because you can’t read it by yourself.”"
I guess with the internet you can glean enough background, the reading groups on r/ThomasPynchon was very helpful. Also being older helps.
Also, "Justin St. Clair, associate professor of English at the University of South Alabama, takes the argument one step further: “This may be heresy,” he says, “but I think I like the movie better than the book.”"
Also, "For Reilly, it ignores the most important aspect of the book: the many and varied references to the Manson Family. Set in the period between the Tate-LaBianca murders and the Manson trial, the novel captures the moment when Californians lost faith in the counterculture."
I really need to watch Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I recently watched Under The Silver Lake, and found it interesting. Had lots of naked women prancing around the screen, and can comment on the male gaze at the same time, so you know, it's an aware flesh film.
"His analysis clarified my belief that any attempt to adapt Pynchon would ultimately fail because there’s too much going on beneath the surface."
I think a movie doesn't have to compare itself to the book because they're two different mediums. For all the love I feel for a text, I can still see the movie as a separate entity, and relish the scene in the rain where they're really in love, or Jaquine's yelling at the photo of the baby when she was a heroin addict. There was a feeling like showing her healthy now is kind of a lie, but I guess a lot of film makers decide to Hollywood out of realism, and just dip into it with their own witty commentary.
"Inherent Vice opens with an epigraph: “Under the paving stones, the beach.” It’s a slogan made popular during the uprisings in France in May 1968. The beach refers to the sand underneath the paving stones that the students dug up and threw at the police. For Pynchon, what lies beneath the surface has always been a source of fascination."
I asked a woman visiting from Minnesota, what was the tribe that used to be on the lands she lives and works on. She said some version of the Sioux, and there was migration west as we became aware of them in writing so it's confusing to be more specific.
I live on Matinecock land, Flushing bay. Willow creek was turned into Willow Lake, and that's the nearest lovely spot for me to walk to.
The Tongva were the tribe that were along the California coast.
Fascinating, I didn't know: "Thanks to Senate Bill 796, which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law in September 2021, the land, known as Bruce’s Beach, will be returned to the descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce, the owners who were forced to abandon their property just as Doc describes." They didn't just run off natives, they also ran off blacks.
Anyway, fascinating article.
Bonus: Interesting article from 2006: The Thomas Pynchon affair by Ian Rankin. He wrote his dissertation on Pynchon's short stories. Fun article.
"Pynchon seemed to fit the model I was learning of literature as an extended code or grail quest. Moreover, he was like a drug: as you worked out one layer of meaning, you quickly wanted to move to the next. He wrote action novels about spies and soldiers that also happened to be detective stories and bawdy romps.
His books were picaresquely post-modern and his humour was Marxian (tendance: Groucho). On page six of The Crying of Lot 49, the name Quackenbush appears, and you know you are in safely comedic hands."
Later, "With his playfulness (what Barthes would doubtless have called jouissance) and his codifying tactics, he seemed the writer that deconstruction and its ilk had been waiting for. An undergrad could compose a 1000-word essay on the ramifications of the title of the law firm in the opening pages of Lot 49 (Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus, in case you were wondering).
I found Pynchon Notes, a journal that ran from 1979-2009.
Surprising ranking on r/thomaaspynchon
4.60✩ - Gravity's Rainbow
4.54✩ - Mason & Dixon
4.27✩ - Against the Day
3.86✩ - The Crying of Lot 49
3.86✩ - Inherent Vice
3.81✩ - V.
3.64✩ - Bleeding Edge
3.62✩ - Vineland
Google offer up to me a 2021 blog post about Vineland.
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