Rating  - The Best of Pynchon
Pynchon's "V." is still, to my mind, one of the very best of the master's works. Yes, it's the first, and yes, "Gravity's Rainbow" blows much of it away with its monster expansiveness, its staggering detail, its Nabokovian command of language. Yet, for some reason, I like "V." above the later Pynchon work. I find myself still dipping into various chapters, set over all the world, as the history of the twentieth century is written and rewritten. Even the characters seem more interesting than those in "Gravity's Rainbow": Benny Profane is symbolic of a whole era in American life, post WWII. He moves, he lives, things happen to him. And the quest for "V." herself in all her manifold appearances and disappearances is really, really good. I'll always need this novel, always come back to it for nourishment, for some understanding of that impossible to understand last century.
-Tom Maremaa, Author of the Forthcoming Metal Heads: A Novel from Kunati Books in Spring 2009
Rating  - Beautifully written, but who cares?
On almost every page I encountered passages of beautiful, witty, amazingly written prose. But, after about 200 pages, I just couldn't care less about any of the characters, or what happened to them. I am a well-educated person and have read most of the classic "western canon". I appreciate many "modern" authors like Marquez, Roth, Walker Percy, Bellow, Updike, Joseph Heller, etc. But I find that my life is too short to persevere with Mr. Pynchon when I neither like or dislike the characters and couldn't care less what happens to them. Based on my experience with this book I have shied away from Delillo since they are always compared similarly. All you guys who believe Pynchon is a great 20th century author can have him.
Rating  - Thank God for the last chapter
I like this book. After I read the last chapter I loved the thing. It's not the most compelling read as you're going through, and half of the time I was asking myself "why keep reading?"...
Then I finished the book (more importantly the last chapter) and it was as if a switch had been flipped in my head, the whole book is wonderfully collaborative and makes complete sense. The only problem was getting to that particular point.
It is quite the opposite of what happens when I usually read a book, you don't want it to end, and when it does you're disappointed.
I sincerely wanted this book to end while I was reading it, and once I was finished I wanted to re-read it because it was so refreshing and it just makes sense. If it weren't for the end I'd have given it three stars, and if it weren't for the rest I'd have given it five, go figure.
Rating  - III. not V.
I realize most reviewers have given 4 or 5 stars, but really - 492 pages to tell what could have been told with the same literary tricks in half that. This is another book that proves the point that just because something can be done - it doesn't have to be done.
I enjoyed the book a lot. The humor, history, characters, scenery, more characters all add up to a fun if challenging read. I just couldn't see the need for the droning endless descriptions that added nothing to the story.
I'll read those he wrote later with anxious anticipation.
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Customer Reviews for Harper Perennial Modern Classics,0060930217,9780060930219,0060930217,813.54 |
