Probably the book we will remember the 21st century by. Or the book that remembers us better than we remember ourselves? An external feeling. This book is an external feeling projected onto internal self and external others projected within yourself. An elaborate 3D model made by a graduate architect at the university as a part of his final dissertation. Or a tiny landscape study of the view. With shapes bent back, distorted but truthful, and the hand trying to put everything together as if it had never been broken apart.
i think?
Dead words. Not female or male but a dry scenery of prose that stuck halfway between Andre Gide and some expansionist mentality. It technically works, it technically points to certain curves of human fate, which are always peculiar, but reading it feels like hard labour. Constant digging of stones, tunnels, exploration of caverns which are mysterious but filled with nothing but dust and gravel. Or: looking at paintings devoid of their inner glow; touching your sleepy face early in the morning.
This book was utterly confusing. I guessed it might be a good introduction to Pynchon because his other works are much much longer, but I was only half-right. On the good side, it prepares you, sort of, to accept that you will not be able to completely comprehend everything that is written here. The book itself suggests, in a manner of meta-narrative, that clues are as clear and self-referential as they are emptied of meaning beyond what you yourself might ascribe to them. It's only your choice whether you'll follow threads or not, whether you'll construct some kind of story or “meaning” out of them (I feel this particular word lingers more than any other during reading). Sure, I had my bit of fun with it. I had fun exploring what academics wrote about it – although the journal articles themselves are a bit too much (kind of academically douchy, if that makes sense). I also had fun diving into all that conspiracy-type stuff around it and listened to almost a 4-hour podcast about the Dutch and U.S. postal service systems, JFK, 2nd World War concentration camps, Nazi human experiments, etc. However, what I think is missing in this book, if you compare it to the rest of Pyncho's body of work, is his great style and literary talent. In comparison, The Crying of Lot 49 feels like the worst and most confusing parts of V. and Gravity Rainbow devoided of beautiful and intricate passages.
It's not a good book. The stories are virtually boring and back and forth and terrible. The worst of D.F. But the last one is pretty much alright. So just skip the whole of the book and read the last bit which is more like a novella rather than a short story. Reading it feels a bit like putting your head in a microwave and calmly waiting for something to happen. Sometimes D.F. is too much and all over the place but, at the same time, this is the exact joy and genius about him. The story perfectly nails down this scratchy feeling when you leave your house/flat/condo in the morning, the outside is absolutely white and blinding, and everything feels off and every thing FEELS altogether at the SAME time and your skin is almost folded over your body like a dry perfectly smoothed-out foil. It's fucking insufferable.
