by Thomas Pynchon.

What do you all think of it? Let me know when you've started to read!

Suits me. I'll begin this evening.

Fine I'll order a copy. It's available on both Amazon and Play.

The library might save you some money. </shameless plug>

quote:

Originally posted by Caterwauller:
The library might save you some money. </shameless plug>

It might indeed, were there a library within a convenient distance. Unfortunately where I work doesn't give me time to get into the city at lunch times and the nearest lending library that I could get to on Saturday would entail a ninety minute round trip assuming I just walked in, picked up the book and walked back out.

There used to be a local library but it's been closed for at least twenty years now and was such a small establishment that I'd have needed to order in the book from a main library anyway.

Alas in this modern world libraries are fewer and further between than ever.

Thanks, CW. I will find a copy and begin to read it, too.

quote:

Alas in this modern world libraries are fewer and further between than ever.

Oh my goodness, how very sad!

I am almost finished. It really is a short book. How are others doing?

Just got it today but it shouldn't take long to read. I'll start on the train going to work tomorrow.

We just got it last night, and Shu will read it first.

I am into a very good book, but not all that intellectual, I fear.

The library has just notified me that they have the book on reserve for me. I will pick it up tomorrow after work.

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I am into a very good book, but not all that intellectual, I fear.

Very best type of book, IMHO.

Very best type of book, IMHO.

I used to feel the same way, but from the other end of the spectrum. Now, I simply read whatever I like, and stop reading whatever I don't like pretty soon on. There are many who think fiction is a waste of time, and some call a waste of time entertainment. All types, etc. I enjoyed Lot 49 immensely upon first reading it, and my enjoyment hasn't diminished with subsequent re-readings.

quote:

Very best type of book, IMHO.

I had my good book today in a great coffee shop, with leather couches and a fireplace. I read the book I'm loving as I sipped on excellent coffee, and I felt as though I were in Heaven! Of course, my favorite person in the world was sitting next to me, which rounded out the experience.

Well, I finished. Should I write about it here and now or wait until we get an o0n-line discussion going?

I, too, finished. What say you, CW?

I'm about 2/3 done, but go ahead and start discussing! One thing I've really enjoyed are the character names. Koteks being one of my favorites.

OK, I'll go first. I've always wondered about Oedipa's name. Oedipus, means "lame of foot" in Greek, and he answers the Sphynx's question and also uncovers a horrible secret about himself. As for Maas, it's the Dutch/German form of the Meuse (Muse?). And, of course, it leads to her husband's delicious name of Wendell "Mucho" Maas.

There's a lovely sequence that's stuck with me, in describing San Narciso: "She drove into San Narciso on a Sunday, in a rented Impala. Nothing was happening. She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battary and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate." [p.13 Bantam paperback]

A few random(ish) observations.

When I started to read this I expected, on the evidence of the first few pages, to like it. I liked the writing style and the use of language although I found the "cleverness" of the names rather self-consciously used.

Unfortunately I soon realised that my appreciation of the book began and ended with the language. Perhaps it is a book that makes more sense to Americans but there appears to be no narrative cohesion - in fact, by and large, no narrative. Instead we have a series of improbable and unconnected events which start well enough, spend the rest of the book going nowhere and then stop.

I was tempted by facile comparisons to Lewis Carrol (female protagonist, weird characters, a world out of kilter with any reality I'm familiar with) and slightly less facile ones to Kafka (a lead character who doesn't understand what's happening, a world in which everything seems arbitrary, a sense of paranoia brought about by mysterious external forces that may or my not exist) but both Wonderland and The Trial have an internal logic that seems to me to be lacking in The Crying of Lot 49. It wasn't that nothing seemed to connect for Oedipa, nothing seemed to connect for me either.

That was the essential problem. I felt absolutely no connection with the book. The language use was clever but that's about all I got from it. For such a short book I found it hellishly difficult to finish.

I am sorry you didn't enjoy it, Bob. It's interesting how my reaction was pretty much the reverse of yours. When I first read the book, I was sucked in by the surfeit of plot points (which reminds me of Chandler's novels), and never really noticed how the narrative was not quite cohering. Also, the language was something I only appreciated on a second, slower reading. The parts I liked were the contemporary critique of California culture of the '60s and the whole lit crit pseudo-apparatus of the revenge play. I hope not everybody disliked it ...

And there you have the very heart of the problem - on me a "contemporary critique of California culture of the '60s" is entirely lost. It's meaningless as I have no applicable frame of reference for it. As I was reading I suspected that opinions would be split down the middle - down the middle of the Atlantic in fact.

Did anyone else over here read it?

I find the book entertaining largely because it is so very different from what I usually read. It is quite surreal, and I constantly have the feeling that there are myriad jokes that I'm missing. I feel like I know when I should be chuckling, but I'm not always sure WHY I should be chuckling. I just assumed it was my extreme youth and cluelessness.

I also have to concentrate more than I usually do when reading - LOL. There are words I've never heard of, and sometimes the context isn't familiar enough to me to tell me what they mean, so I have to actually look them up! Gasp!

But I am finding it enjoyable . . . fascinating because it's so very odd.

I have started it...finally. So far I am enjoying it, though, as CW said, I have to concentrate a whole lot more than I did in the previous book I read ("The Devil Wears Prada"). But that's good because it makes me think I am reading good literature! I also find myself laughing...for example, when Dr. Hilarious (!) called his own patient at 3:00 a.m. and then asked what she wanted to talk about! Not that was hilarious!

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book that makes more sense to Americans

Interesting, Bob, because there are a fair number of European references in the book, and on my book cover it talks about it having a "strong European flavor."

[I doubt anyone here has read "The Devil Wears Prada" because it's a little superficial. I found it a great "boss" story, and that part was fun. However, the book's ending was not well thought out, so I felt a little cheated.]

Maybe we should read something like "The Devil Wears Prada" next! I just finished both "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Sex, Lies and Online Dating"(probably on the same level as your book, Kalleh!).