Difficult Novels 2: This time ... it's personal!

A continuation of the previous thread about difficult but rewarding reads. I'm currently reading Vineland by Pynchon. Truth be told, I'm not finding it that difficult. Granted, it's the 3rd Pynchon novel I've read, so I know his obsessions and am familiar with his literary style. Still ... "Vineland" reads like a really polished Tom Robbins book, since his books also have pot-smoking iconoclasts and Sixties refugees. This isn't downgrading Pynchon in the least, nor giving Robbins any undue praise. Robbins is a great author, he just doesn't float my boat right now.

While "Vineland" is supposedly the "weakest" of Pynchon's novels -- define "weak" -- it's definitely on a different level than, say, Gravity's Rainbow and Mason and Dixon But "Vineland", thus far, I'm 100+ pages into it, is consistently funny, whereas his other short novel, Crying of Lot 49 contains more dread and conspiracies. And the cliche goes, "Drama is easy, comedy is hard."

Another consideration, "Vineland" is considered "weak", but that was during the early 90s, when the Reagan Dream was still alive and kicking. How does "Vineland" read following the political travesties and genocide of the Dubya years, combined with the death throes of neoconservative laissez faire capitalism with the Great Recession of 2009? Pop commercial books like those written by Balzac and Dickens were meat and potatoes literature for the masses in Victorian times. Now we need footnotes just to figure out references and literary allusions. "Vineland" is fun because I actually know a majority of the references and I grew up during the 80s.

In summary, "Vineland" isn't that difficult.

As I've mentioned on these boards before, I've been reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Reading it is, without a doubt, the toughest task I've voluntarily taken upon myself in quite some time. It's difficult, without a doubt. It requires all of my mental faculties to read this - whether it's puzzling out the odd chronology of the semi-dystopian world, keeping the 50+ characters straight, or trying to grasp Wallace's ridiculously humongous lexicon (regular words, obscure words, and words Wallace makes up). Yet it's a blast. It's hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking. I'm amazed at the amount of experiences he's managed to get into writing.

Infinite Jest is difficult, but worth the struggle.

Hang in there.

Difficult books lead to increased brain size and enhanced libido.*

* This according to stringent tests conducted over the course of my 40 years as a reader--results soon soon be printed in THE LANCET and NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE.

2: I agree, Infinite Jest is incredibly difficult, but also highly rewarding. Something to reread eventually; like Gravity's Rainbow and Paradise Lost.

Having recently finished Infinite Jest (sooooo good. I'll just leave it at that, because I could talk about IJ all day), I've decided to give Gravity's Rainbow a try. As I've mentioned before, I absolutely hated The Crying of Lot 49 when I read it a few years ago, but I skimmed a few passages in GR and I liked what I saw, so I'm giving Tommy another shot. I didn't find IJ all that difficult, to be honest, but I've heard a lot of horror stories about how dense GR is. Density doesn't frighten me (ie I adore Ulysses), but I want to make sure I go about this the right way. Any tips before I make my first foray in a couple of days? (have to finish a Wittgenstein's Mistress re-read first)

Whoo-hoo, from Wallace to Pynchon to Joyce: I like your literary chutzpah. Takes courage AND brains to go after the big boys like that but beware of swelling in the frontal lobes and a tendency to feel smarter and slightly superior to the people around you. These are but two of the many side-effects of immersing yourself in great art. Caution is advised...

That's why I like shaking it up a bit. Read through a few "difficult" novels -- Pynchon, Wallace, etc. -- then read some quality pop lit -- Andrew Vachss, a Warhammer 40K, etc. Too much Pynchon would be like gorging yourself of duck liver pate and salmon roe. Vachss and Warhammer 40K are like really well-done street food. Nothing avant-garde, nothing experimental, just good fun. The works of James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer -- to take this literature as food metaphor to its logical conclusion -- would be like licking the rear end of seven day old roadkill ... in July. Vachss and the lads at Warhammer 40K write pure genre fare, but at least they can write well when the story demands. Patterson and Meyer beg the question: "How did you pass 8th grade composition?" Even Joseph Conrad, who had English as a second language, wrote better than those two sub-literate scribblers and changed English literature to boot.

Karl, is it possible for you to go a whole day without mentioning Stephanie Myers?

>8 semckibbin: - I believe he mentions her less than once per day, actually.

8: No and it's Stephenie Meyer ;)

>10 kswolff: - Ooh, my bad, then?

Sorry. :-)

>7 kswolff: - English wasn't Conrad's second language, that was French. English was third, possibly fourth.

>5 Sutpen: - Having finished Infinite Jest a few weeks ago, I could absolutely talk all day about it as well. So much good stuff in that book. One day, years and years from now, I'll reread it...

13: Touche.

**Doffs hat. Bows**

5> I loved Wittgenstein's Mistress. Was it better on the second reading?

If you want difficulty, read the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein.

17: Actually, I think you really ought to read the Tractatus before reading Wittgenstein's Mistress. The novel is really fun to read in light of Wittgenstein's early stuff.

16: I ended up liking it a lot more than the first time. The first time I read it, I found some stretches to be sort of a struggle. In an interview with Michael Silverblatt, David Foster Wallace admitted that he used a sierpinski gasket as the inspiration for the structure of Infinite Jest. Going through WM this time, I think this might have been where DFW got the idea to apply fractal structure to a novel. I know DFW loved WM (he called it "pretty much the high point of experimental literature in this country"), and I noticed a similar structure in WM: a topic is brought up, discussed, left; and then when another topic relates somewhat, the original one is referenced again, in a slightly different light.

13> Conrad's languages: Russian, Polish, French, English. He apparently thought long and hard about doing his literary work in French before deciding to go with English.

Hugh Walpole said that Conrad "thought in Polish, arranged his thoughts in French, and expressed them in English."

I lifted that quotation from an interesting article about Conrad's langauges here: http://home.earthlink.net/~apousada/id4.html.

18: I have read the Tractatus. Heady stuff. Somehow Wittgenstein melded philosophical logic with mysticism. Walter Benjamin also did the same thing.

actually philosophical investigations verges far more on the mystical than the tractatus which is..terse and aphoristic. Not that i can pretend to an understanding of either.

"241. 'So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?' ---It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in a form of life."

The dude was a flat out genius. The Investigations is profound.

oh i think Wittgenstein could have been "genius" in the field of his choice, math, music, philosophy. Even if i can't understand the Investigations as philosophy, i can appreciate it as poetry. I very much enjoyed Wittgenstein's Poker, a very "personal" history of one of the storied moments in 20th C philosophy.