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Comment by pault | Hacker News Reader

> Who the hell is this Joyce who demands so many waking hours of the few thousand I have still to live for a proper appreciation of his quirks and fancies and flashes of rendering?

This is a perfect phrasing of my feelings about all postmodern literature. I tried so hard to get into Pynchon but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was the butt of an elaborate practical joke.

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As long as we're all engaging in some iconoclasm today, I'll quote a book review by John Dolan[1]:

"I side with PKD over Pynchon. In fact, I consider Dick to be the one genius, the one absolute genius in US literature since 1945. I find Pynchon to be kind of an Uncle Tom, as a representative of science fiction, making pointless and protracted Faulknerian noises in his prose to suck up to a New-Yorker-sensibility."

[1] - http://exile.ru/old-exile/vault/books/review66.html

I find Pynchon much more entertaining to read than Joyce. If he's telling a joke, the reader is certainly in on it; it's pretty clear he takes himself only as seriously as he should.

Huh? The only Pynchon I read was "The Crying of Lot 49", but this was easy to read, hilarious, and extremely topical for anybody working tech in California.

I read (half of) Gravity's Rainbow, maybe I'll give Lot 49 a try.

I had this same problem with Pynchon. Try David Foster Wallace, much more approachable.

Try reading "Inherent Vice." It barely reads like Pynchon. Or rather it's Pynchon writing the Big Lebowski like Raymond Chandler would, if Raymond Chandler were a hippie.

I don't even know what this means but I'm upvoting it anyway!

You might enjoy On Moral Fiction by John Gardner, who argues that good literature is about the characters, especially their decisions and transformations, rather than cleverness in language and plot. His model is Anna Karenina, and I think it's people like Pynchon he has in mind for his critique. And he was not just a stodgy critic, but a flowering author himself. His book Grendel is short and fun---the story of Beowulf from the monster's perspective. Sadly he died young in a motorcycle accident, so we didn't get many examples of his approach. Another modern writer that I think he would have approved of is Wallace Stegner. Crossing to Safety and Angle of Repose are both wonderful.

That feeling may come from looking for meaning or trying to make sense of it. That's the conclusion I reached, anyway, after reading V and Gravity's Rainbow, anyway. And one other -- Vineland, that was it.

I love Dubliners by Joyce, but the later stuff? I'd sooner read The Sound and the Fury again, but only if published with the different color inks Faulkner wanted.

Good news for you, if you're willing to spring for it: http://www.foliosociety.com/book/SAE/sound-fury-william-faul...

Well, maybe I can find a friend who bought it. I know a professor who's a real Faulkner fan who might have it. Thanks for sharing that.

> I'd sooner read The Sound and the Fury again

I have to assume this means that Joyce is somehow worse than sticking forks covered in bees into your eyes. The Sound and the Fury is on the shortlist for the worst book I ever heard was a great piece of literature, and soldiered through despite its awfulness.

I liked it, but it was work to try to follow. I don't think I got it all after reading it twice. And yeah, Finnegans Wake -- no thanks.

I attempted S+F but there was a girl imvolved. Neither worked out.

Aren't Vonnegut, Heller and the magical realists all post-modern? And eminently accessible...

Joyce is surely an arch-modernist. Not so sure about Pynchon.

Pynchon is really great for listening to while exercising / cleaning / whatever as well.

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