>>25320794 I'm assuming you too have written something as good as gravity's Rainbow and followed it up with something better than vineland. wait a minute I'm getting word you haven't? well then
Read this before One Battle After Another and was slightly disappointed. Probably my least favorite of his but I still haven't gotten to Against the Day and Bleeding Edge (might not ever read that one).
>>25321155 >durrr you can't have opinions on art unless you're an artist of comparable talent Dude, even reddit wouldn't take you This is an argument people make in elementary school Literally how the fuck are you this retarded Go back to India
A lot of juice went into Gravity's Rainbow. Very rarely (if ever? I'm having a hard time thinking of one) does someone follow up their masterpiece with something comparable.
>>25321276 I re-read this before OBAA, still loved it, and was disappointed OBAA was too different yet simultaneously too similar. If you can deal with Inherent Vice and Shadow Ticket, there's little reason to avoid Bleeding Edge.
>>25321776 Next book I read will probably be Against the Day, might was well finish his bibliography out at a later date. Also, Against the Day sounds like a shitty 2000s Hot Topic band.
>>25321829 There is a hierarchy of people. The ones at the bottom can be commented on by the ones at the top, but the opposite is not true, for the ones at the bottom have no perception for what it is like for the ones at the top due to limited mental capacity, which is what keeps them at the bottom.
>>25321829 If you knew what it took to create great art, you would be able to do it. That is so obvious yet the critics have convinced themselves otherwise.
>>25321909 >great art How do you call some art great without yourself being a critic? Or are you a great artist yourself? If only great artists themselves may have negative opinions then who can have positive ones?
>>25321935 You can have negative opinions, but you must understand that it is only a personal feeling of how you interface with it and it is of no value.
>>25321938 But cannot good criticism itself be an artform? Or what if we expand criticism into a broader category of scholarship? Must a literary scholar also be themselves a novelist to write their dissertation on a novel?
>>25322006 The "pynchon" CIA program lost funding for those 17 years, as GR didn't have the effect they'd hoped it'd have. They tried again with Vineland but funding was so scant the couldn't write anything very good, and the program was effectively canceled after its publication. The rest of the works produced by the pynchon program were more or less made for fun, something the intelligence officers did in their spare time whilst working on other blackops. That's why pynchon lite is the way it is.
>>25321769 >Very rarely (if ever? I'm having a hard time thinking of one) does someone follow up their masterpiece with something comparable. Melville with MD/Pierre Mann with MM/Joseph And the third one depends on what you think about Finnegans Wake
>>25323119 Someone who gets it. M&D is the true successor to GR, Vineland was just a fun side piece he worked on while researching and pulling M&D together slowly. Though I do wonder if he had started ATD in those years too as it seems unlikely he'd pull out 1000+ pages in less than a decade between books.
I just finished Gravity’s Rainbow yesterday. Absolutely phenomenal. I did not expect it. I knew it was gonna be zany, I’ve read a little bit of crying and bleeding edge but this is his first I’ve finished and it’s incredible not only how funny it is but how tender and poignant it could be at select parts. It’s one of those novels that makes you feel rejuvenated at the end honestly like a great album or movie does. Like kinda life affirming in a way, despite the obvious overlying especially near the end concept of total death. Oh and how fucking dirty is this motherfucker God damn