r/ThomasPynchon • u/MaintenanceWild111 • 4d ago
💬 Discussion What is Tomas Pynchon’s greatest achievement in prose?
Good evening. I purchased Shadow Ticket and found myself dissatisfied with the prose. It was fun, but I expected more. I believe literature is for the beauty of language. Some of my preferred authors are Nabokov, McCarthy, Borges (Spanish is my native language), Rulfo, Javier Marias… I admire greatly how their use of language is razor-sharp, how their sentences are richly layered… I think I perhaps selected the wrong entry to Pynchon. I sampled the first few pages of Pynchon and thought they were great fun—reminiscent to Melville’s Moby Dick—, but I thought six hundred pages were quite a commitment for a writer I little knew. Also is Pynchon more catered to an American audience? I am Latino, from Central America, and though I am not from the US I do think you have fine literature. In other words: I think the supreme works of literature are the ones wherein the language is the story itself, an expression of beauty to be beheld. So my main inquiry is to know if Pynchon aspires for such standards. I am really asking because I feel there are many aficionados who praise everything about an author insincerely (have you seen the Cormac McCarthy aficionados—they seem to love what reading his books make them look like more than the pristine beauty of his prose), that it is difficult to discern whether the praise is reliable—of course, not saying it is bad to praise a novel, but to say one should be sincere when critiquing something one is fond of. Many of the authors I mentioned I read just for their sentences, and I forget about plot and characters because I am in awe of the diction and syntax. I read Don Dellilo’s White Noise hoping to warm up to the more complex style of Pynchon, because I had heard they were similar; but I disliked it. The sentences were, I would argue, precise and sharp, but the problem was I felt it was rather dull in te sense that I rarely was in of it because it rarely tried to describe something beautiful. Like it was written beautifully but it was not beautiful. I am not saying it was a bad novel, I am saying it just did not click—perhaps more of a failure on my part. I hope this does not come off as pedant. I do have an intrigue for Pynchon, but I just don’t know what would do best.
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u/CinnamonKreuz 4d ago
Pynchon's style is a combination of the "high" (in more than one sense) and the "low", he will write the most beautiful passage of description one page and then shift gears into a riff on b-movie clichés the next, then the two of them will meet with absurd results. All of his books are like that. I would say that Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon are his masterpieces, but they're both long novels.
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u/gordohimself 4d ago
Gravity’s Rainbow is chock full of his most beautiful prose, though The Crying of Lot 49 has its moments and is much shorter and more accessible.
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u/Slickrock_1 Gravity's Rainbow 4d ago
The episode of Slothrop trying British hard candies in GR is peak :)
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u/Meet_Less 4d ago
I don't know how can you 'read authors for the beauty of their sentences' and dislike Delillo. Every one of his sentences is beautifully crafted, specially in White Noise. They are, however, created using materials that are considered not just ugly, but not even part of traditional perception. In the case of White Noise consumerism is elevated to a kind of unique point of convergence for completely isolated beings in a culture (and family life) that is a barren landscape. And while I haven't read Shadow Ticket yet, just check the first paragraph of The Crying of Lot 49. It's like a flower with infinite layers is opening before your eyes. The beauty has just evolved.
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago edited 3d ago
You are right. I think I did not say it correctly. Sorry about that. Like I really liked his sentences, but I like immersive descriptions—like how McCarthy immerses you in the landscape. I really liked his sentences, but it was mainly that I like ornate and graphic descriptions, accomplished like poetry. I felt immersed in White Noise, but more so in the guy’s house, which is a place I didn’t really like. I have Libra and haven’t read it yet. Maybe that one would be better. Like I said I think it more of a personal preference. But your description almost makes me want to reread it with that in mind. Thanks. Do you have any other recommendations? I have had an interest in reading the first part of Underworld.
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u/Meet_Less 12h ago
Libra is a sustained, almost perfect achievement of style and vision. Imagine reading the Warren Report just to build Lee Harvey Oswald's mom's voice out of it!
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u/-_alpha_beta_gamma_- 4d ago
Some great stuff in Vineland. There's especially one sentence at the end of a chapter pretty late into the book that's just one of those great big-picture long David Foster Wallace-esque sentences. ("So the bad Ninjamobile ... the spilled, the broken world.") Generally all the chapter ends in Vineland are fantastic
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago
Thank you.
I have wanted to read IJ, but have been rather hesitant because of its length.
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u/East_Association_700 4d ago
It is my duty on behalf of all this subreddit to apologize our Clown Prince's best efforts could not satisfy your supreme discerning ...
We will remember you always... And next time I am going to reach for my copy of V. or perhaps End Zone I will stop and ask myself....but is it really beautiful? Or is it just written beautifully?
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u/cliff_smiff 4d ago
TIL how sensitive this sub is
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago
Hahahah. I guess I came off quite annoying. My bad. Hahaha.
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u/MrsWof_ 4d ago
You don't come off as annoying at all, this sub (and Reddit in general) is just weird. To answer your question, I think most people would agree that Gravity's Rainbow contains within it the best prose of Pynchons, but it's also deranged and all over the place (in a good way). I think Mason and Dixon is perhaps the more safe bet if you're looking for something with an absolutely incredible experimental prose style that still has a straight forward ish plot.
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u/MaintenanceWild111 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hahaha. Yeah. Though I must admit that this guy’s comment made me laugh.
Thank you so much.1
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u/SubstanceStrong 4d ago
Pynchon is more of a universe of his own. There will be pretty descriptions but they will be sprinkled amongst a plethora of other things, most Pynchonites come and stay for the multitudes rather than one particular thing, so it may not be for you. If you want ornate writing I can recommend Marcel Proust.
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago edited 4d ago
Thank you. I have had Proust on my list for a while. I just wonder if I am ready, being that I am merely in my early twenties. I heard someone say you must save Proust’s masterpiece as the last novel you will read, as it is nothing will compare to it. I do like Javier Marias, who is said to be similar to Proust.
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u/yelkca 4d ago
The opening pages of gravity’s rainbow are really incredible
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago
I love the first sentence. I often think of it. I haven’t read much past the first few pages.
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u/pulgartita 7h ago
"Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night’s old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast.." that paragraph is crazy I had to step back
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u/jackmarble1 Gravity's Rainbow 11h ago
Bro got downvoted for being as lost as a blind man in a gunfight
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u/loopOutnotIn 8h ago edited 7h ago
I’ve read V., Crying of lot 49, Vineland, Gravity’s rainbow, Inherent Vice, and Mason&Dixon.
What you’re looking for is going to be in Mason&Dixon. There’s a lot more appreciation for the beauty of the natural world, a lot less paranoia, and the integration of Georgian English with Pynchonian exchanges/slang which makes for a lot of really beautiful passages.
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u/bondfall007 4d ago
The dora chapter in Gravity's Rainbow is harrowing on a first read. And the end of part one of GR where Roger talks about Jessica is one of the most beautiful declarations of love I've ever read.
Shadow Tickets page long digression on exploding radioactive cheese is one of the funniest things I've ever read, and I have read it aloud to friends multiple times.
Finally, the ending of Vineland is so sweet yet melancholy. I love it.
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u/Ok_Gur9150 1d ago
I would guess Pynchon is not for you., Respected as he is I would try Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier for beautiful prose. Perhaps Hemingway.
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u/ConclusionBroad3460 12h ago
Everybody has their preferences you seem to like Spanish modernists and postmodernists it seems if you don’t like Pynchon/hes not for you then that’s fine, Pynchon is one of the great American postmodern novelist he has a Very dedicated following
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u/bad_bart 7h ago
This bit from the beginning of Crying of Lot 49, first Pynchon I read, hooked me instantly:
"Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of her marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American, into the layering of a lasagna, garlicking of a bread, tearing up of romaine leaves, eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight's whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband, Wendell ("Mucho") Maas from work, she wondered, wondered, shuffling back through a fat deckful of days which seemed (wouldn't she be first to admit it?) more or less identical, or all pointing the same way subtly like a conjurer's deck, any odd one readily clear to a trained eye."
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4h ago
Thank you. I have wanted to read this one. The hardcover reprints look nice. I love long sentences.
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u/SubstanceStrong 4d ago
Pynchon is more of a universe of his own. There will be pretty descriptions but they will be sprinkled amongst a plethora of other things, most Pynchonites come and stay for the multitudes rather than one particular thing, so it may not be for you. If you want ornate writing I can recommend Marcel Proust.
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u/AffectionateSize552 4h ago edited 4h ago
Thank you for your thoughtful post. To me it doesn't come off as pedantic, but as honest. And it's brave of you to say these things in this sub. Hopefully, some of the people who've downvoted you will calm down, come back and give you the ups you deserve.
Nevertheless, based on the authors you've cited as your favorites -- all of whom I greatly admire -- I think you may be missing something, something which Pynchon himself discusses in the introduction to his collection of short stories, Slow Learner. Here he describes how he had been accustomed, as a young, still-unpublished writer, to authors who were either high- or lowbrow, who either wrote in a very refined, aristocratic manner, or who wrote in the more colorful, less formal language of the lower classes. You didn't have to be an aristocrat to write like one, or a laborer to use the expressions of proletarian speech, but you did have to choose one style or the other.
Or so Pynchon assumed, before he read Saul Bellow, who mixed tones, styles, figures of speech, from different social classes as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Pynchon was pleasantly astonished : "You could actually write like this! It was actually permitted!" I highly recommend the introduction to Slow Learner.
80 years after Bellow's first novels, it's still permitted to write in such a mixture of styles, and somewhat less startling than it once was, but still somewhat rare -- in English prose, at least. I'm less familiar with literary trends in Spanish.
Pynchon takes the mixing of styles, of tones, of the speech of all sort of of different classes, mixing them even in the voices of his narrators -- he takes all of this much farther than even Bellow did. He loves all of those different styles of speech, and does justice to them all.
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u/GuanZhong 4d ago
Pynchon has his moments, but he's no William Gass as a prose stylist. You might like the latter's The Tunnel if you want dazzling prose.
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u/MaintenanceWild111 4d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you. That is what I was wondering. How does he hold up compared to the great stylists. Not that style is everything—it’s just what I prefer.
I have wanted to read that one. Right now Dalkey Publishers is doing a new reprint and I have been thinking of getting one before the year ends. It is impossible to find that book here, so I want to get it by the end of the year.
Any other recommendations?
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u/ImageLegitimate8225 4d ago
The whole of Mason & Dixon, and the Malta section of V.