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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3441 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I have a $25 gift card to Barnes and Nobles. What should I get?

    Other books I have enjoyed are Kurt Vonnegut, My side of the mountain, Fight Club, Vurt, Catch-22, Flicker, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Everything Is Illuminated.

For $25 you can get both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inherent_Vice and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49, I assume.





jleopold  ·  3441 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm reading Inherent Vice right now. I think it makes a good intro to Pynchon. I tried to start with Gravity's Rainbow, but found the method a little too hard. Vice is great because it isn't constantly uber-Pynchon, but he comes through greatly at times, and the plot is much more straightforward than Gravity's, though by no means straightforward by any other measure.

user-inactivated  ·  3441 days ago  ·  link  ·  

All true. The greatest disservice ever done to Pynchon was canonizing a single one of his novels at the expense of the others.

In my opinion, Gravity's Rainbow should be read last.