... which is why I've been fairly quiet on the blog.
A long, long time ago, I read a review of R.E.M.'s Murmur which described it as (if I remember the quote correctly) "the aural equivalent of Gravity's Rainbow."
So, obviously, I had to get to the local library and check out Gravity's Rainbow.
I gave up about ten pages in (just as I had with A Farewell to Arms in sixth grade or so, before coming back after high school to love Hemingway).
Fast forward to maybe five years ago, when I picked up another Thomas Pynchon novel, Vineland, at a yard sale or thrift store and found it eminently readable.
Then a couple of weeks ago, at a yard sale, I found The Crying of Lot 49 and likewise enjoyed it.
So I ordered V. Just finished it. Quite interesting.
I guess Gravity's Rainbow comes next (the first two I read were out of chronological publishing order, but now I'm resolved to read the remaining ones from old to new in that order). Buckling my seatbelt now.
I think my bridge to being able to settle down and enjoy Pynchon was Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon and The System of the World both have a lot in common with Pynchon's "secret history" and "hysterical realism" angles.
After Pynchon, and a break from "literary fiction?" David Foster Wallace, maybe, or even Vladimir Nabakov.
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