I’ll start, so as a teen I stumbled across a book called," Someone comes to town, someone leaves town." The synopsis caught me as it’s about a man with a mountain as a fathera washing machine as a mother and one brother that is dead and trying to harm him. I’ll admit some of the technical terms were too much for my developing mind but it has stuck with me all these years.
What is the wackiest / craziest book you’ve read and did you enjoy the ride?
That’s a lie. Nobody has read Gravity’s Rainbow. But I like the title.
I’ve been working on it for more than 6 months. I read one chapter, read it again, then give up on the book for 3 weeks. Then I come back to it and read another chapter. It’s a hell of a difficult read.
It really is, but it’s completely worth the journey! Come on over to r/ThomasPynchon if you have any questions! The Weisenburger companion is a great help, as are the posts from the group read we did a while back on that sub. But don’t try too hard to understand it the first time - if you get 10% of it, you’re doing great.
I think I’m understanding a fair bit of it (certainly not everything!), since I usually read a chapter once, look through the various online resources (Pynchonwiki etc.), then read it again, or reread most of it. So it’s not that I can’t make head or tails of it, it’s just… it’s such a strenuous process. It’s intellectually stimulating for sure, but it’s hard to find what I would consider a typical sense of enjoyment in it. It’s more like slowly grinding away at a difficult and monumental task. But maybe I’ll get to a point where it “grips” me and I’ll start reading it purely for enjoyment.
Getting to a point you’re reading it purely for enjoyment? That’s not going to happen. Being glad it’s finished, like digging out an ingrown toenail? Yes, you’ll get there.