It looks like New York got so mad at me for abandoning it for five days that it tried to punish me by heralding my return with a fuck-off blizzard. Well guess what, city? All you managed to do was delay my flight home by thirty minutes, allowing me more time to make out on a hammock in the sunshine, and give me a half day at work. You know, for a city that thinks it's so tough, you are not effective at enacting revenge. Speaking of sunshine...
A year after California real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity dies, his ex-girlfriend Oedipa Maas finds out that she was named executor of his estate. And what a vast, twisty, potentially conspiracy theory-filled estate it is. She discovers the existence of an alternate, underground postal service, and keeps running into signs pointing her towards a conspiracy dating back to the 16th century, revolving around murdered maybe-princes, German war movies, pornographic papal plays, California bookstore arson, and stamp auctions. Oedipa doesn't know if she's going insane, or if she really is finding evidence of a worldwide conspiracy, or if she's hallucinating, or if Inverarity set the whole thing up just to fuck with her.
It's a cool and unique read, with some great descriptive language ("He read the letter and withdrew along a shy string of eyeblinks.") and punny names (Inigo Barfstable. Emory Bortz. Wendell "Mucho" Maas. Mike Fallopian. Genghis Cohen), but I don't know if it was enough to make me want to dive into the gigantic time-suck/mind-fuck that is Gravity's Rainbow. This was enough Pynchon for now.
One of many funny details: Oedipa's lawyer, "wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him," had been writing, for years, The Profession v. Perry Mason, A Not-so-hypothetical Indictment.
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3 comments:
What's Balls Jr.?
And are you working off a list with the books you read?
You probably explained it all in an earlier post, but hey...
You've got me interested enough to ask, but not interested enough read everything.
I didn't understand the concluding part of your article, could you please explain it more?
Goddammit, all of my blog comments went into my spam folder.
Joel, Balls Jr. is the second round of Cannonball Read, a reading contest being held through Pajiba. You can read more about it here http://www.pajiba.com/book_reviews/cannonball-read-season-two.php
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