The first Pynchon novel I ever read was Gravity's Rainbow, and I was hooked from the moment it came screaming across the sky. Pynchon had a way to describe a scene from the point of view of the people 'in their time' and to flick between narrative and acquired first person like an internal film camera shooting multiple points of view. This creates a strange other world sense in the reader who at some points is confounded and at other times seems to know much more than the characters about what is going on.
Pynchon's writing style is not for everyone though, using oblique references and distractions as well as a sometimes warped sense of humour. I'll admit that I just let some parts wash over me and don't get too hung up if I don't know exactly the doctrine of a narodnik, or the calculus of a cathedral dome, as long as I can keep the general flow going.
But the sense of place, people, perspective, debate, discourse and psychology in the London wartime novel was intense. I can still visualise the browns, the darkened windows, the nighttime and the sometimes almost claustrophobic interaction of some of the characters juxtaposed with arcs from mainland Europe to England as rockets traced their course through the sky. Yet it is an age since I read the book.
When I read Vineland years later, I had a sense of 'is this the same author?' based upon the different style and genre with set in a surfy hippy America. It seemed difficult to imagine the same person creating both of these works, although the style and clever ways to detach from what is happening seem to occur in both novels.
The tangential points within both novels are in some senses very realistic in the way that people who are very comfortable with one anothers' company will digress into all kinds of conversations or dive into their own subconscious and memories.
So with some delight today I heard that Pynchon has just released a new novel. Now I heard this in a discussion where one person was saying that Pynchon was difficult to read and the other person was saying that people only buy his books for show.
But I don't care, I will be adding the new one "Against the Day" to my Christmas List, and hope that Santa is kind.
