Vineland

Rating:
Summary: You have to know Humbolt County
Review: "Vineland" is not "Gravity's Rainbow," and it is not "V." It is a delightful ride with a master wordsmith who has more than a few tales to tell. But realize, as in his other works, all things are connected, and you'd best have someone watching your back.

Pynchon provides a slightly - but only slightly - exaggerated account of the war on drugs as pursued in northern California - facile fascism in the guise of moral purity. Well, purity is sort of an absolute, and Pynchon has always seemed more comfortable with ambiguity - or obscurity - I forget which. And what is "sort of an absolute?" This guys writing really does things to my thinking process.

A film adaptation of this book would need Tim Robbins to produce, Carl Hiaasen to cast (Johnny Depp is Zoyd), Tom Robbins to write the screenplay (maybe Vonnegut could consult), and David Lynch to direct. Killer movie - award winner at Sundance and Cannes - box office bust!

I love Pynchon's work, and while "Vineland" is not "Gravity's Rainbow" or "V," I couldn't read it without looking over my shoulder. Was that my shadow I just saw? Castenada, can you help me out here? Who is that masked man?

Good read.

Rating:
Summary: For Pynchon it's an easy read
Review: If you have never read Pynchon, you should begin here. This book is not as complicated or distant as V, Gravity's Rainbow or Mason&Dixon, but it does get you used to his style. Geographically and time wise you don't have some of the extremes you can encounter in his other novels.

And don't think that someone else can tell you what a Pynchon novel is about. It's about what you take from it, and the questions you end up asking about the world you live in.

As to criticism that this guy doesn't know how to write, give me a break, that's like someone going to see a play by Shakespeare during his life and complaining that he didn't know how to write.

Pynchon is not a easy read ever, but if you want something more than a book you'll pour through and forget in a week, try it.

Rating:
Summary: Why no one cares about your acid flashbacks
Review: So, I picked this book up at a library sale. Those fatigued librarians don't actually shelve donations handed to them over the counter. They stuff them in the basement, and every six months or so make a buck or two off people like me -- overeducated underemployed people, people who've heard of Pynchon, read about writers with Pynchon-esque prose, but couldn't be bothered to actually read him. About that time I also picked up The Crying of Lot 49. Vineland is about four times the length of Lot 49, and I feel I got ripped by the former and made on the latter.

Vineland opens strong. Zoyd, ostensibly the hero, but noticeably absent for half the book, makes a faux-insane public nuisance of himself to keep a disability check coming. The writing during this opening is so crisp a reader can feel that Pynchon knew he had a quality idea on his hands. It's good stuff, a small town personality carving out a life by getting paid for public humiliation. Hey, that's commentary, that's allegory, and Mr. Pynchon might've be on to something there. Too bad it's completely abandoned for a long, meandering story of a loosely connected group of nobodies marching through fantastical sixties nostalgia and nonsensical symbolism.

Why we learn so much about these people is never really clear, because there isn't a plot in Vineland. Oh sure, people are looking for Zoyd's ex-wife and such, but Pynchon makes it pretty obvious he couldn't care less about all that. Rather, he focuses on this wickedly outrageous hippie lamentation for the promise of social revolution during the 60s, if only those radicals zigged when the shoulda zagged. It isn't hagiography by a damn sight, but sure as hell isn't structured fiction either. Unstructured stories aren't bad in and of themselves, but the author has to give the reader a reason to care about the book. Pynchon simply doesn't.

He's got some nice scenes, some well-turned phrases ("concrete surf"). The strongest bit outside the lead chapters is about Zoyd's mother-in-law, of all things. Her impact on the story though is nothing more than negligible. She's an excuse for Pynchon go off on another tangent.

Pynchon must have been saying something with this book about a little NoCal town, about reformed and unreformed hippies, the man, regret, and so forth, but he sure wasn't talking to me.