Thomas Pynchon

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I highly recommend you do not choose Thomas Pynchon for author thesis. His works are brilliant, but are full of multiple plots, dense pages, obscure references to pop culture in the 70s to the early 2000s, and themes I personally found I couldn't relate to. He is known for trying to confuse and throw off the reader in his novels. His books take a long time to read, so its often difficult to meet all the checkpoints with out staying up late. I'm fast reader, but his shortest novel "The Crying of Lot 49" was a little under 200 pages, but it took me longer to read than an average 300 page novel. One of his most prominent themes is paranoia and how it affects the individual. It was difficult to go deep on this topic because its not relatable.

If you do end up choosing Pynchon as your author, you should know there are two types of Pynchon's novels. Under one type falls "Gravity's Rainbow" and "The Crying of Lot 49", these novels are so insanely complicated, that even people who have read the books multiple times do not fully comprehend them. "Gravity's Rainbow" also nears 800 pages and contains over 300 characters, it is not a book to read for this assignment. The other type of novels are easier to read and relate to, I unfortunately only read one book on this category which was "Bleeding Edge". I took the most out of this novel, because Pynchon tried less to confuse the reader, by not having numerous plot lines or characters. If I had to do Thomas Pynchon again I would probably choose to read if not all my books, at least two from the second Pynchon category and "The Crying of Lot 49".

American Author Thesis

Now that you have written your essay, we ask that you reflect on the reading portion of the experience and write 100-150 words about your author.

Think of what you write as advice for someone next year and beyond, someone who (like you were doing last fall) is thinking about choosing your author - and maybe even the same three books - to read for the assignment.