Thomas Pynchon

One of the recent reader requests is to give my opinion of him.  It's pretty simple.  The first half or so of Gravity's Rainbow is extraordinary.  V is a superb novel, his most consistent work, and it is best read by not trying to make much sense of it.  The Crying of Lot 49 feels like an excellent novella but over time it slips away from you and is probably a minor work.  The rest of it I cannot finish — or even get far in — and my best guess is that it is wheel-spinning and it will not last.  I haven't tried the latest book and it is not high on my list.  He's certainly an important figure and worth reading and indeed rereading.  But I view him as belonging to the somewhat distant past.

Here is the Twitter stream on Thomas Pynchon, as good a place to start as any.

The request by the way comes from this blog.  Here is a post on Vincent Ostrom, husband of Elinor, and an oddly neglected figure in recent times.