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Oriana's Reviews > Vineland

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
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it was amazing
bookshelves: phenomenal, read-2007
Read 3 times. Last read November 1, 2007.

So when you think of Pynchon you think of serious work, right? And trudgery and difficulty and obfuscation and pedanticism, and like this dizzying thing that just makes you feel unintellectual and slow for never being able to catch up, right?

Well if that is the case, you have never read Vineland . Because oh. my. god. This book is so fucking good.

I'm not going to try to summarize or anything, because this book is too sprawling and reeling, and anyway that would be an afront to its amazingness. But look, it's got all the same basic building blocks as any Pynchon book鈥攁 million characters exhaustively historied, unfollowable plot twists, crazy ranting paranoia, incredibly phraseology, bizarre songs, sixties culture, sex and violence (in fact, large swaths are oddly comparable to Kill Bill, if you ask me)鈥攂ut it's done at a much...easier level somehow. It's much more accessible, it's hilarious and warm, and you don't feel like you're in quicksand the whole time, just desperately trying to understand and keep breathing.

See, people never talk about the really unimaginable joy that soars through Pynchon's work. And beauty! I mean look, this book is tough, for sure, and I won't try to claim that I understood everything, but honestly it just doesn't matter. It's just so much fun to read. It's not work at all.

And the ending! Once I had like thirty pages left I started getting that dark foreboding feeling, you know, like there's no way he can end this satisfactorily, there just isn't enough space. I was so sure he was going to do something horrible, leaving everything messy and unfulfilling, end things like right in the middle of a sentence or something, but no! The ending was beautiful, just like the rest of the book, totally satisfying and wonderful. Jeez I loved this book. Wow.
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Reading Progress

Finished Reading
Finished Reading
March 18, 2007 – Shelved
Started Reading
November 1, 2007 – Finished Reading
November 13, 2007 – Shelved as: phenomenal
November 15, 2007 – Shelved as: read-2007

Comments Showing 1-23 of 23 (23 new)

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message 1: by Tosh (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:26PM) (new) - added it

Tosh I have this book, but haven't yet read it. "Against the Day" is probably one of the great novels in my time - and yet, I stopped reading it at page 500! Why? It maybe due to time constrants and it's hard to read on the bus or bathtub due to its design. It just came out in paperback, so...


message 2: by Oriana (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:27PM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Oriana haha I know! That's why I didn't get it the minute it came out... I knew I had to wait for the paperback. Like 90% of my reading happens on the subway or in the park, and if I had to carry around a 10-lb hardback all the time, I'd break my back. Plus I mean reading Pynchon is a massive undertaking, emotionally and intellectually, so I've got to be ready for that.

Anyway, Vineland is just as fun as I remembered it. You should totally read it!


message 3: by Tosh (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:27PM) (new) - added it

Tosh I will read Vineland! You should read "Against the Day" in the bathtub. If it's too heavy, let me know and I will hold it for you. Or at least read it to you.... from a distance of course!


message 4: by Oriana (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:27PM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Oriana Ha! Tosh, that is the best book-related offer I've ever gotten!!


message 5: by Oriana (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:44PM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Oriana HA! Omigod that is an amazingly cool idea. I can't wait to read your paper, thanks so much for sending it. I have to (sheepishly) admit that I've never read Gass, so I hope I'll still get it. Don't you love looking back at your awesomely bad pretentiousness? I'm super excited to get a glimpse into someone else's.


message 6: by Sonky (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:45PM) (new) - added it

Sonky That same joy that soars through Pynchon's work soars through your review. Continued thanks for your inspired writing.


message 7: by Oriana (last edited Aug 25, 2016 01:45PM) (new) - rated it 5 stars

Oriana Wow, Jason. What an incredible compliment. Thanks!!


Momoselli Good comment on the way a reader feels 30 pages from the end. I obviously don't want to offer much, but I was laughing outloud so much at the turns that it took to sew this ending up. Laughing at the turns that were perfect yet unimagined. Fun, fun ending on just an improbably set of circumstances just 30 pages away.


message 9: by Randy (new) - added it

Randy You make this sound like Moby Dick meets Hester Prynne...Don't disappoint me book babe!


Oriana Haha, what? I hate both of those books!


message 11: by Randy (new) - added it

Randy I'm going to try Vineland based on your review? Should I? or should I skip to Gravity's Rainbow?


message 12: by Mark (new)

Mark "I'll have what she's having."


Oriana Ohhh. Well if you've never read Pynchon before, it depends what you want. If you want kind of like Pynchon lite, a ways to slowly ease yourself into his world (and have a lot of fun doing it), start here for sure. But if you want to just leap the fuck into the deep end, Gravity's Rainbow is phenomenal too. Just be prepared for a lot more work.


message 14: by Jen (new) - rated it 3 stars

Jen I completely agree with you about that 30-pages-from-the-ending sense of foreboding--and I was completely satisfied with the ending, too.


Rayroy I love when Brock is taken to hell in a tow-truck!


sologdin good review. i thought kill bill a number of times, too. doubtful that tarantino reads pynchon, though?


Oriana huh, i have no idea. is he known to be a reader? he must be, right?


message 18: by Karen (last edited Jan 27, 2013 02:45AM) (new) - added it

Karen Garrison I want to read Vineland now that I see your reviews.
I didn't like Kill Bill(there are two references to it in reviews) all that much, but I like what was said by Oriana about it being warmer, easier and more fun.:-)Plus hilarious!Now those characteristics can make all the difference!

Btw, I never found reading Pynchon to be trudgery, or difficult. Yes, his plots and characters wind around themselves like an Escher print..but I never found them confusing..it's more like poetry.


Oriana Yay! I totally agree he's more like poetry.


Suzanne This is encouraging.


Little Doe a crazy cross of imagined ninjas, hippie spies, communists that are communal, and Tom Robbins must have read Pynchon, it's like a carnival of Slaughterhouse Five's Montana Wildhack meets the wacky and way out cosmic Sissy Gitch.. if you can get through it, you wont need to do acid or even fill out any more applications in your life for anything free,, God bless Pynchon, your one craazy cool mind bender.


Oriana Haha, nice, very well said!!


Simon I keep wondering if this book served as an inspiration for the Coen Brothers' "The Big Lebowski", similar parody of traditional American crime/espionage novels combined with examination of how hippies from the 1960's and 1970's survived in the more conservative era of the 1980's and 1990's except 10 times weirder


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