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That did help, yes. Legolas Send a noteboard - 06/03/2011 08:11:15 PM
Would you say this is a good place to start, or were you helped by having encountered his style elsewhere, and therefore knowing what to expect?

I think you might like Mason & Dixon better, find the subject matter more interesting. I think I do myself, but it was the first Pynchon I tried, and I had a hard time reading more than twenty pages of it at a time - at a time when I didn't read as regularly as now, so I just gave up in the end.

Mason & Dixon starts in 18th century Britain, over Saint Helena and the Cape colony to the American colonies, about the land surveyors who drew the "Mason-Dixon line", still forming the border between a number of American states.

Or you could try Against the Day, which starts out at the Chicago World Fair in 1893, and iirc somehow manages to include the Tunguska event and other stuff around the turn of the century. But as I said, haven't finished either of them or even reached half-way, so take it for what it's worth.

I suspect each of Pynchon's books does hit a point sooner or later where you at least know what the main plotline is supposed to be, and where it's heading, it just takes a while to get there. Once you get there, it gets a bit easier to keep reading.
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Thomas Pynchon - Vineland - 06/03/2011 05:23:44 PM 7539 Views
I have yet to attempt one of these. - 06/03/2011 06:20:08 PM 1174 Views
That did help, yes. - 06/03/2011 08:11:15 PM 1210 Views
Thanks for this. I've wanted to pick up Pynchon for a long time. *NM* - 07/03/2011 04:05:14 AM 799 Views

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