New Pynchon Novel! Part 4

Musing Outloud about Thomas Pynchon's writing

Welcome back to my round-up of Notes posts on Pynchon’s writing in anticipation of Shadow Ticket coming out Oct 7, 2025.

At this point am I just writing a memoir?

You can read my previous dailies on Pynchon starting here:

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Day 20 of new Pynchon novel coming out, a quick note that my experiences discussing Gravity’s Rainbow has led me to determine that everyone has their own Gravity’s Rainbow, by which I mean we all agree on the umbrella, global synopsis, but discussing the book usually leads to very personalized takes and memories of scenes.

As such sometimes it’s a little difficult to discuss it with people simply because each person is talking about something different. Normally the discussion coalesces around the quality of the writing itself. However I’ve learned to also just listen to people’s descriptions of GR as if it’s a book I’ve never read.

The book is dense enough I don’t think a regular human brain can overall absorb it in its completeness — if that’s even possible of any book. At least from the first read, people tend to glom onto very specific scenes that others have mentally glazed over.

Borges' has this quote I love about “A man would be lucky to read 1000 books in his entire life, and even then would be lucky to read one book in all its fullness” (paraphrased from memory). He was referring to his obsession with A Thousand and One Nights.

As mentioned previously, Gravity’s Rainbow is picaresque enough to be read as a series of short stories, too. Browsable. Like Borges’ “one book in its fullness,” I suppose Gravity’s Rainbow could be my A Thousand and One Nights or how Finnegans Wake reads to some people. An eternal volume that opens up to different pages every time.

My latest, third full read-through, I wrote a one-sentence summary of “in this scene, this happened” on the margins of the copy I was reading just to see if future convos would be easier in that regard. For my part, my first read-through left me with banana-cream pie battles against limerick-singing Americans during an underground hot air balloon chase, Slothrop’s pig costume, and Bianca (which character still makes me uneasy and that’s one reason she’s memorable).

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Day 21 of new Pynchon novel coming out, basically my decision to reread Pynchon yearly came out of three reasons.

The first was a family friend who told me that he reread Gravity’s Rainbow “about once every dozen years” and “always found new things about it.” Seemed like a good idea, but I like planning or structuring my reading choices a bit more than by feel.

The second was that my sister used to reread the full Harry Potter series each year and I wanted a tradition like that.

The main reason, though, is a few years ago I realized two things: one, I had a bunch of books and movies lying around I acquired because I wanted to revisit them, and two, when I was in college and greedily inhaling every complex movie and book I could get my hands on, I overdid it and didn't really actually comprehend — or remember — much of which I had experienced.

An example is Musil’s The Man without Qualities. Somewhere in the UNM student library is a record showing I did indeed borrow it, in two volumes. Potentially one of my roommates at the time could recall me reading it; at any rate I remember the action of flipping through the pages, one-by-one, reading it word-by-word, until I was done and returned it.

I have zero memory of it whatsoever. No imagery, characters, feelings, takeaways, thoughts, plot points, descriptions, or themes. I’ve only technically read it the way many people are technically literate. As far as comprehension goes, I may as well have not.

So, I wouldn’t check that book off as a “have read” these days. There’s actually a few books I even remember liking a lot that I no longer would say I have read. I was, oddly, a huge Edith Wharton fan in high school, but I only remember a little about Ethan Frome these days and don’t even remember which of her other books I read, despite knowing I read multiple.

And the same is true of movies. By the time I rewatched Hidden Fortress a few years ago, a movie I owned on DVD and watched twice in college, it was like watching a brand new Kurosawa movie.

Maybe my own brain has just poor memory, but there are some books and movies I’ve only seen or read once that I remember well. Anyway the more content and information you flood your brain with, the less you retain, which is why I now chill out on the number of books and movies I take in and also one reason why social media will always fuck your information retainment.

Anyway, I decided a couple years ago to alternate reading a new book and rereading an old book. If I want to revisit either once I finish, I put it on the reread shelf. If I feel I’m satisfied, done with it, I get rid of it, usually putting it into a little free library somewhere.

Then when I visit my mother’s house in New Mexico, I go into storage and retrieve some old books and movies (and sometimes CDs) for revisiting. And in this manner I saw all the Pynchon books and decided to retrieve one at a time, each year, until I reread them all.

As it turned out I kept finding myself reading them roughly around the end of April, and then I thought about it and decided May Day is a great day to launch another Pynchon read. Then later I learned his birthday is in May and that sealed the deal. Now I have my little personal tradition.

Arguably, I may tire of it. Perhaps there will be a point where I will finish and think, “I’m done with this book now,” and then put it in a LFL. But so far, each time reading each Pynchon book is much like reading a new Pynchon book, even if I retain strong memories of it from previous reads.

There’s always that part of me, an addictive part of me, that wants to hoard books and read more more more especially new new new. Ideas like Umberto Eco’s Library often make excuses for consumerist lifestyle acquisition of mere shelf-dressing. But whereas my to-read shelf represents “possibility,” my re-read shelf, ultimately, are the books I want to read. In retrospect, first reads are merely to determine if you’re into it. If you don’t reread books then that begs the question of whether you really getting that much out of your selections.

Book lovers (and movie and music collectors) tend to enjoy showing their vast, heavily laden shelves, but I have only two shelves of new reads (to be fair, stuffed and piling over…) and three shelves of rereads, yet I am fairly certain I have more books in my little NYC apartment than I’ll be able to read before I die. I could hunker down and read all of them maybe in a handful of years. But that would be useless because I’d hardly remember most of them.

So I’ve decided to prioritize slow and deep to fast and broad, reading-wise. In the movie world, if I could get away with it, I would watch only 50 movies a year new in theaters, and 50 rewatched a year at home. But I have my wife’s interests and our movie nights to account for, so it doesn’t work out at all like that.

I used to track how many books I read a year, but fuck that. I’d say maybe north of a dozen. Pynchon takes up a significant section of the year, particularly his doorstoppers. So I really am choosing him over discovery and novelty.

And now I’m rereading Harry Potter in Spanish and it's taking forever, so basically I’m not making any progress through my shelves at all.

However, I’m still enjoying the act of reading itself, so in the end what does it matter if I’m hitting a certain book number or “getting around to” things? I don’t actually believe many of the book lovers’ self-mythologizing about books making them particularly smart or empathetic or understanding or moral people. I think it helps if you are developing yourself methodically, but most people are not. Reading is still mostly entertainment for most people. I will cop that reading gives you analytical skills and an attention span.

But I promise you dozens of the books you’ve “checked off” over the years are so gone from your mind that you can uncheck them from the have-read list because you don’t remember a single word. And at this point you do actually know what you like, so you can let go reading stuff you know you won’t. Whether you choose broad or deep, you’ll never read the whole library nor any one book in its fullness.

Accept your mortality and enjoy your quiet time and all the thoughts it gives you.

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Day 22 of new Pynchon novel coming out, my estimation of how much of each book I even remember or retain, despite my multiple read-throughs, including with annotations:

Slow Learner: 15%. It’s been a very long time and was scheduled to be reread next year. Probably still will be.

V.: A solid 70%.

The Crying of Lot 49: 85% despite not having read it for a while, it was the first of his I read, the first of his I reread, one of his I most reread, and it’s not that complex or deep.

Gravity’s Rainbow: 60%, though I’m not really sure you can remember much more than that so maybe it’s more like 55%. But definitely more than half.

Vineland: 75%

Mason & Dixon : 70%

Against the Day: 75%. Possibly actually more since I love it so much, but at 1000+ pages how much can I expect to hold in my head?

Inherent Vice: 55%. Revisit was scheduled for this year but displaced by Shadow Ticket.

Bleeding Edge: 80%, last year’s reread and not really all that dense.

I would say this is built out of the assumption that a person reading a 250 page entertaining genre novel is going to remember about 70% of it from a first read, 90% from a second read, then 95% of it from a third read. Technically studies show that on average, people only retain about 40% of what they first read from textbooks,* without taking notes, studying, or rereading, but I’m certain story and entertainment value pushes that up quite a bit.

* Side note, isn't the word textbook a little strange? All books are text books, unless they’re picture books or graphic novels.

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Day 23 of new Pynchon nov— movie? coming out, I saw the trailer for One Battle After Another last night before Sinners.

Honestly, if I didn’t know it was based on part on Vineland, I wouldn’t have known. Did not discern anything from the novel’s plot, the dialog so far is unrecognizable, and the tone didn’t feel the same either.

But again I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, especially since PTA changed the title.

I remember when Inherent Vice came out, most people’s referent was actually The Big Lebowski. That was a little difficult for me because I love The Big Lebowski and have a personal relationship behind it too (The Dude is like a more carefree version of my father and my whole family saw it in theaters together when I was a kid), and so I didn't want another Big Lebowski and I didn’t even want a Pynchonian one.

Come to find, the movie wasn’t anything like The Big Lebowski. I feel this trailer may also be hiding some of PTA’s more sober takes. In its current form it amps up Pynchon's humor to satire, his irony to sarcasm — but on odd grainy indie film stock. There’s also a hint of blaxploitation in it, making me want to call One Battle After Another PTA’s Jackie Brown.

I’m still looking forward to it as a PTA movie, not so much as a Pynchon story. But I suppose we will see. David Foster Wallace said of Vineland, “It seems Pynchon spent all those years [between books] smoking pot and watching television,” (paraphrased) and there is some of that vibe there, at least. Again I feel PTA is more interested in California per se than Pynchon.

You know, one of my favorite parts about Inherent Vice the movie was when Doc Sportello was zipping around LA with Blatnoyd. It was just so funny and carefree. Later I found the only part I really liked in Licorice Pizza was the part where they dealt with the truck running out of fuel. I think PT Anderson has some vehicle-set slapstick comedy in the vein of maybe something like It’s a Mad, Mad, […] World (I ain’t counting those “Mads”) in him.

About the title, I keep forgetting it. “Vineland” you remember immediately, “one battle after another” for some reason is more slippery. What does it mean? Sounds tired, despite the trailer being zany.

By the way when looking up the title I realized this is Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th movie. So he’s releasing a 10th movie, a Thomas Pynchon adaptation, the same year Thomas Pynchon is releasing his 10th book.

[Cue paranoia wall with red string nodes and scribbles of the number 10]

Day 24 of new Pynchon novel, a story about Vineland:

Vineland was the first Pynchon book where his language clicked. Like, previously I could see that it was great writing, and then there was the matter of comprehension, but while reading Vineland I suddenly hit his rhythm and flowed with it, and haven’t had any trouble dancing and jiving to his songs ever since.

So, since I had been reading his books and telling others about them, my mother asked me if there was any book she might want to check out, and I offered her Vineland. I also figured, her being hippy era and living in California around the time it was ending, she might give me some insight re: Pynchon’s presentation of those themes.

So she reads it. I’m visiting her from college, probably doing laundry and drinking tea. I ask how it went. She says, “Oh, it’s a very good book. And I hate it.”

(Mom’s always been good about differentiating between judging a thing by its actual qualities and by your response to it, something I try to be clear about myself when responding to art. Am I upset because it made me feel that way, or am I upset because it failed to make me feel some way?)

The pain point for her was the relationship between Frenesi and Brock Vond. “I knew women who got into relationships with men like that. It’s awful. You want to ask them what they’re thinking, but on the other hand you know they can’t help themselves.”

That testimonial made me pay attention. Pynchon has similar relationships laced throughout: Maxine and Windust in Bleeding Edge, Lake and Deuce in Against the Day. Those relationships upset and confounded me, and it took me a while to parse them. For the sort of dude that had the ‘nice guy’ problem of not understanding that assholes earned attention with confidence, these characters seemed like a step too far.

And yet, there was my mother talking about those relationships, and how it was too real. And here’s my thesis:

I think one reason women enjoy Pynchon’s work so much is that he writes about women’s sexual desire in a matter-of-fact manner that’s neither over-sentimental (Madonna) or depersonalizing (slut). And brutality has its own arousal, and Pynchon saw it IRL the way my mother saw it IRL. But the trick behind Pynchon’s work is that he has a somewhat Buddhist viewpoint of desire itself, that it imprisons characters in their own private and personal traps.

The thing about the Brock Vond is that he can get Frenesi’s pussy but he can’t get her heart. Neither Zoyd nor Brock can ‘have’ her, but their ability to cope with that fact are two ends of the spectrum of the 1980s hippy hangover. And that same trap grabs all the fascist mooks of Pynchon’s extended universe, regardless of which guise they appear in and their particular use of coercion. Eventually the bootlicking becomes fetish but never love.

Anyway I strongly suspect my mother was one of the “women she knew” in her own accounting of the situation, but she just didn’t want to talk about it.

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E-mail length limit hit so quickly? YouTube embeds are heavy.

See you next week with more Days of new Pynchon novel. As of writing this post, I have 41 written, and by the time you read it I should have 45.

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