Καθώς διάβαζα άλλο ένα απίθανο βιβλίο του Pynchon αυτό που είχα συνέχεια στο μυαλό μου ήταν τι εντύπωση θα μου έκανε αν το διάβαζα σε real time, το 1990, ως το βιβλίο που κυκλοφόρησε ο συγγραφέας μετά από 17 χρόνια σιωπής που ακολούθησαν το αξεπέραστο Ουράνιο Τόξο. Αυτό βέβαια δεν είναι κάτι άλλο από απλή λογοτεχνική άσκηση, γιατί το Vineland αν κ μάλλον είναι το βιβλίο του που με συγκίνησε περισσότερο (είμαι στα μισά της βιβλιογραφίας του βέβαια), ταυτόχρονα είναι ξεκάθαρο ότι δεν φθάνει τα ύψη όσων είχαν προηγηθεί κ αυτών που θα ακολουθούσαν (π.χ. mason & dixon, δεν έχω διαβάσει το Ενάντια στη Μέρα αν κ έχω προσπαθήσει). Ίσως να είχα απογοητευτεί, ποιος ξέρει. Το σίγουρο είναι πως το 2017 μοιάζει σαν ένα μικρό αριστούργημα.

Το Vineland, αν κ το χαρακτηρίζει το απίθανο χιούμορ του συγγραφέα του, είναι ένα σκοτεινό βιβλίο που σχολιάζει την κατέρρευση των χίπικων ονείρων των 60s (για τους Αμερικανούς καυτό θέμα, αντίστοιχο με τα όσα σημαίνει το τέλος του σοσιαλιστικού ονείρου για την ευρωπαϊκή λογοτεχνία). Ο Pynchon με ασταμάτητα μπρος πίσω στο χρόνο (το σήμερα του βιβλίου είναι το 1984 -Ρίγκαν δηλαδή κτλ.) αφηγείται μια παρανοϊκή ιστορία των 60s που περιλαμβάνει μια γυναίκα-νίντζα, πολλά ναρκωτικά, ανθρώπινες σχέσεις κάθε είδους, μια υπόνοια από Γκοντζίλα, ανάσταση νεκρών, επιτυχημένες κ αποτυχημένες εξεγέρσεις, χωρίς ο αναγνώστης να χάνει το ενδιαφέρον του ούτε λεπτό. Σε δεύτερο επίπεδο, υπάρχει η οικογένεια κ εκεί ακριβώς βρίσκονται οι καλύτερες σελίδες του βιβλίου. Οι πρωταγωνιστές του βιβλίου αλλάζουν κι εκεί που στην αρχή πιστεύεις πως θα διαβάσεις κάτι αντίστοιχο με το Inherent Vice κ πως όλα θα κινηθούν γύρω απ'τον Zoyd κ την κόρη του καθώς θα προσπαθήσουν να ξεφύγουν απ'τα δόντια του FBI, το βιβλίο απλώνεται κ εστιάζει σε ένα σκασμό απίθανους χαρακτήρες με τον Ιάπωνα ασφαλιστή Takeshi να είναι μάλλον ο αγαπημένος μου. Ίσως βέβαια ο Pynchon να το παρακάνει με τις εναλλαγές αφού κάπου στα μισά το Vineland μοιάζει ένα πολύ μπερδεμένο κουβάρι αλλά το καταπληκτικό φιναλε δικαιολογεί μάλλον τα πάντα.

Δεν θα πω τίποτα παραπάνω, απίθανο βιβλίο, ανώτερο του IV

Υ.Γ. Ας προσποιηθούμε όλοι μαζί πως το βιβλίο δεν έχει μεταφραστεί στα ελληνικά, όχι γιατί ο μεταμοντέρνος τρόπος γραφής του, δύσκολα διασώζεται στην μετάφραση (ο Κυριαζής έχει αποδείξει άλλωστε το αντίθετο) αλλά γιατί η ελληνική μετάφραση του Βαχλιώτη κάνει αυτή του Μάτεσι στο Handmaid's Tale να φαντάζει ως το καλύτερο πράγμα που έχει συμβεί στην ιστορία της μεταφρασμένης πεζογραφίας της χώρας. Τονίζω ότι δεν υπάρχει δείγμα ιδιοτροπίας εδώ, πρόκειται για έγκλημα. Ότι υπάρχει άνθρωπος που το διάβασε στα ελληνικά κ του άρεσε είτε αποδεικνύει το μεγαλείο του Pynchon είτε ότι το όνομα του "δύσκολου" που κουβαλάει ήταν αρκετή δικαιολογία για να προσπεραστούν τα όσα ακατανόητα συμβαίνουν. Ντρέπομαι να το πουλήσω μη τυχόν κ το αγοράσει κάποιος.

Vineland is Pynchon at his most empathetic. I find strong emotions run through his books in different ways, but you can really feel the strong sense of nostalgic regret and remorse he feels toward the 60s of California, and this is his eulogy. In a brave showing, he does not show it as some pristine utopia, but finds humor in its eccentricities, even pointing a disappointed finger at those inside who sold their own movement out for quick fixes, yet also taking the time to understand and empathize with these same lost souls.

Laugh out loud funny, with brilliantly beautiful paragraphs of somber remorse, also with interludes and parodies of ninja movies and cop TV shows, all wrapped up in the heartbreaking story of a young girl trying to understand the lost turncoat rebel mother who abandoned her.

I really, really adored this book. Don't listen to the haters.

When I was getting a PhD in English, I refused to read Pynchon because I thought the last thing the world needed was another book by a modernist author who trying to be more difficult than Joyce.

Then I picked up Vineland out of a bargain bin, and realized it was probably the funniest thing I had ever read. Pynchon is an incredible comic writer.

For as big of a fall from Pynchon's first three novels as it is, and for as massive as an improvement as follow-ups were, it's hard to really stay mad at Vineland. While V. and The Crying of Lot 49 were fine novels in their own right, they also seem to function as lead-ups to Gravity's Rainbow, far and away the peak of early-period Pynchon, and arguably all of Pynchon's career, although Mason and Dixon puts up a good challenge in that regard. After you've hit your peak, where is there to go but down?

I'm probably making Vineland out to seem like a weaker novel than it really is, and it has its problems, true. It butts up against being a little too paranoid, its issues with government, authority, etc. threatening to cross from the well-informed screeds of Gravity's Rainbow to "hippies vs. THE MAN." The characters never really take off in the same way that Tyrone Slothrop, Oedipa Maas, Benny Profane, or later creations like Pynchon's reinterpreted Mason and Dixon or hell, even Doc Spordello and Bigfoot Bjornsen do. The pacing is weirdly lurching, and while some of the digressions are all sorts of fun, others just aren't as interesting as they'd been in the past. And the TV subplot is a little too "WAKE UP, SHEEPLE" for my liking.

Still, isn't a fundamental part of Pynchon's charm in the fact that he walks the line between genius and kook? Isn't the whole point of him that it's hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins? Besides, Vineland has a lot going for it, if you accept that the pleasures here are more modest than those found within GR. A lot of the things Pynchon usually does well are done well here: it's funny, both with the one-liners and the absurd situations, the bizarro-world L.A., full of ninjas and death cults, is a terrifically constructed universe (Neal Stephenson would build a cult following on this sort of thing in just a few years), and Pynchon's prose is magnificent as ever.

So it's not an exceptional novel, but what goes up has got to come down, and given that Pynchon had just ascended to the literary stratosphere, this could've been a much bigger fall than it was. Besides, it's easy for me to imagine that there are a good half-dozen incomplete prospective fourth Pynchon novels strewn around the good man's study, and while some are probably better, some are probably also too much like GR to justify publication. So let's split the difference and call this either a modest success rather than a noble failure, why don't we?

Bij deze heb ik officieel alle romans van Pynchon gelezen

Τι να πω γι'αυτό το βιβλίο; Ένα "γεμάτο" βιβλίο, με χίπηδες, ναρκωτικά, ροκ εν ρολ, σκληρή ροκ, acid ροκ, γενικά ροκ, σεξ, Θανατόιντ, μυστικούς πράκτορες, μυστικά κυβερνητικά σχέδια, γυναίκες νίντζα με θανατηφόρα κόλπα, μανιακούς, τα πάντα! Τρελοί χαρακτήρες, τρελή πλοκή, με πολλά flashbacks κατά τη διάρκεια όλου του βιβλίου και χωρίς προειδοποίηση, αν δεν προσέχεις λίγο, μπορεί να μην καταλάβεις τίποτα, το σίγουρο, όμως, είναι ότι μερικά πράγματα δεν θα τα καταλάβεις έτσι και αλλιώς, οπότε το θέμα είναι να μην το "χάσεις" όλο το βιβλίο.

Δεν είναι ένα απλό βιβλίο, με αρχή, μέση και τέλος, αλλά μια κεντρική ιστορία του παρόντος (του 1984), με πολλές ιστορίες, διάσπαρτες, που πιάνουν και το μεγαλύτερο κομμάτι του βιβλίου, και αφορούν το παρελθόν, πολλά ή λίγα χρόνια πριν το 1984, και αφορούν επίσης πάρα μα πάρα πολλούς χαρακτήρες, είτε είναι πρωταγωνιστές είτε είναι απλώς γκαρσόνια σε μια παρακμιακή καφετέρια στου διαόλου τη μάνα, οπότε, όπως είναι λογικό, τα ονόματα είναι πολλά και πρέπει να κατανοήσεις τη σχέση που έχει ο ένας χαρακτήρας με έναν άλλο και να μην αναρωτιέσαι συνεχώς "ποιος στο διάολο είναι αυτός τώρα;".

Το βιβλίο αυτό σατιρίζει το κόσμο των χίπηδων, αλλά και το Κράτος. Από τα πιο δύσκολα βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει, αλλά και από τα καλύτερα, και σίγουρα από τα πιο ξεχωριστά. Πάντως, μπορώ να πω, ότι κάποιος θα το αγαπήσει αυτό το βιβλίο, ή θα το μισήσει επειδή δεν θα καταλάβαινε, μετά από αυτό το ταξίδι, ποιό είναι το νόημα και για ποιό λόγο γράφηκε.

Η γραφή καταπληκτική, φαινόταν, αλλά η μετάφραση όχι τέλεια, και μερικές λέξεις, μερικές αναφορές σε διάφορα πράγματα που αφορούν τις ΗΠΑ, δεν εξηγούνταν σε σημειώσεις, όπως σε άλλα βιβλία, αλλά τ'άφηνε έτσι... Αλλά δεν με πείραξε και τόσο αυτό.

So when you think of Pynchon you think of serious work, right? And trudgery and difficulty and obfuscation and pedanticism, and like this dizzying thing that just makes you feel unintellectual and slow for never being able to catch up, right?

Well if that is the case, you have never read n  Vinelandn. Because oh. my. god. This book is so fucking good.

I'm not going to try to summarize or anything, because this book is too sprawling and reeling, and anyway that would be an afront to its amazingness. But look, it's got all the same basic building blocks as any Pynchon book—a million characters exhaustively historied, unfollowable plot twists, crazy ranting paranoia, incredibly phraseology, bizarre songs, sixties culture, sex and violence (in fact, large swaths are oddly comparable to Kill Bill, if you ask me)—but it's done at a much...easier level somehow. It's much more accessible, it's hilarious and warm, and you don't feel like you're in quicksand the whole time, just desperately trying to understand and keep breathing.

See, people never talk about the really unimaginable joy that soars through Pynchon's work. And beauty! I mean look, this book is tough, for sure, and I won't try to claim that I understood everything, but honestly it just doesn't matter. It's just so much fun to read. It's not work at all.

And the ending! Once I had like thirty pages left I started getting that dark foreboding feeling, you know, like there's no way he can end this satisfactorily, there just isn't enough space. I was so sure he was going to do something horrible, leaving everything messy and unfulfilling, end things like right in the middle of a sentence or something, but no! The ending was beautiful, just like the rest of the book, totally satisfying and wonderful. Jeez I loved this book. Wow.

I can't understand why this novel been knocked so much. Pynchon's critique of the Boomer generation - how the counter-culture radicals of the 60s became the burnouts and Reaganite sellouts of the 80s - strikes me as really prescient. Especially in the present moment: the sad, hateful drama playing out right now between Trump and Biden is simply America suffering from the last pathetic, destructive throes of the Boomer generation's vice grip on power.

Plus, reading Vineland has also reaffirmed my desire to take a deep dive into Menippean satire. Rabelais and Bakhtin: I'm coming for you!

I had a preconceived notion of what just how good Vineland would be before I read it. My opinions about the book have been influenced by numerous accounts of how weak it was. After having read everything that preceded Pynchon's fourth novel, it's still difficult for me to wholeheartedly disagree, even though I thoroughly enjoyed some parts of it. It made me laugh...but even though I wasn't an avid fan when it was published in 1990, I still couldn't help wonder why this was the book that Pynchon decided to put out there seventeen years after Gravity's Rainbow. The basic sentiment stands; it's inevitable that anything that he had published after Gravity's Rainbow would pale in comparison. That novel is wonderful, and despite my inability to explain exactly why it is, I have a hard time sincerely saying that his subsequent effort really matched up at all. So there it is, I've said it. I've been influenced by descriptions of Vineland, as well as my preconceived expectation for utter disappointment, and now I have to talk about it. However, Salman Rushdie seemed to have enjoyed it. His NYT review is glowing with beatnick-pastiche zeal.

Vineland basically begins with Zoyd Wheeler, a burnt-out "generic long-hair" who is preparing to do his annual publicity stunt (jumping through the window of a bar) in order to cash in on his disability check issued by the government. His old arch-nemesis Hector Zuniga shows up looking for his old lady, Frenesi Gates, and is wondering; will Zoyd help the FBI and the DEA please find out where she is? His daughter Prairie is interested, as much as a young daughter could be in her counterculture/hippie/anarchist/ filmmaker mother. The narrative unfolds through old friends explaining Frenesi's tumultuous political existence to her estranged daughter.

It's in this context that Pynchon covers a lot of ground. What follows is basically a critique of both the Nixon and Reagan years. It's mostly vitriol too, as Pynchon has obviously been harboring in many of these views since finishing Gravity's Rainbow. As usual, it isn't unbalanced because he makes a point of addressing the fact that the hippie movement had failed due to the way that this particular historical revolution had been sublimated by popular culture, television, drugs, rock and roll music, etc. This is all thanks to the American government, and a point that Pynchon wants to stress throughout the book.

How is it though? I don't know. Maybe if I had read it when it just came out in 1990? Hunter S. Thomspon's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas covers the same ground, as well as countless other authors. Whether or not I actually have read enough about the 60's, I simply feel like I know too much about this point in history, and that my knowledge of which has been negatively influenced by romantic cliches. Most of Vineland's pomo zaniness feels stilted, due to this particular style being heavily exploited throughout the early nineties. Pynchon's tone and style seem weak throughout, making Vineland sound, at times, like someone ghostwriting for him. It just lacks the acerbic wit and humor that all of his previous novels embody. I don't think I need to remind too many people that the Crying of Lot 49 covered the same historical period in time with a little more...character.

Is it great Pynchon, no. Is it bad Pynchon, no. It's just Pynchon, and personally that is a statment that I would like to avoid using.

Pynchon's cast of misfits and eccentrics takes us on a crisscross journey through California. The period of activity mostly takes place during the Nixon and Reagan presidencies. 1984 looms large as Pynchon wonders if Orwell is on target.

Our guides include a petty drug-dealer wanna-be rock star, an obsessed DEA agent, a ninja femme fatale, and a counter-culture hippie chick. A love triangle forms between Frenesi, the hippie chick, Brock Vond, the DEA agent, and Zoyd, the wanna-be rock star. Frenesi dumps Brock and goes with Zoyd. They have a daughter named Prairie. Brock uses his authority to frame and separate Frenesi and Zoyd, leaving Prairie without a mother.

The year is 1984. Prairie is a young teen. She has been brought up by Zoyd and sometimes her grandmother on her mom's side, Sasha. Zoyd, Prairie and Sasha have been searching for Frenesi for years but are one step behind as Brock continues to throw interference and antagonize Zoyd.

Pynchon being Pynchon, the characters are extreme and live on the fringes of society. Drugs, antigovernment activity, illicit sex underground and separatists societies are explored. It is a colorful and curious group with depictions of scenes outside of conventional American life.

Pynchon's characters take the spotlight as they are introduced. He takes the reader through a brief history and background of their lives. He then dives into a vivid scene featuring the character.

The world of Pynchon is intriguing. How much he has lived and how much is imagination? Never boring, circuitous and cerebral, Pynchon is an original.

The novel transports him back to California, the country he has often visited, even lived in, but which still seems like a dream, everything too vivid, too distinct, too much to be real, the Pacific viewed from halfway up a mountain, separated into bands progressing from aquamarine to eggshell, sea transformed into sky in a series of gradations as precise as the steps in a theorem, the ever-present background hum of violence occasionally coalescing into tangible form, raised voices from the lobby, a scream, coming downstairs to see a man slumped over the front desk, blood pouring from a hole in the occipital region of his head, a cramped office where nerds take a break from creating the future to sit on the floor and drink coffee from laboratory glassware and then return to symbolic manipulations that may turn into billions of dollars which will then be stolen by smart operators more familiar with the legal aspects of stock options, mystical sex on waterbeds with girls who still call themselves hippie chicks when they are naked and speak indifferent Spanish and Japanese, Pynchon reconstructs it all in living technicolor, it is a kind of minor miracle.

Everybody always told me Vineland was Pynchon’s worst effort - what? No way no how, brothers and sisters, this here is an endless DNA chain or like Russian doll of embedded story after story descending and re-emerging through various strata of narratorial layers, pop culture send-ups, genre parodies, all funny as hell and twisted and ridiculous while also extremely smart and painted with mind-tweaking flights down and up imaginative spiral staircases! And there’s so much heart in this book this old cold hombre almost teared up at certain moments. Worst Pynchon? - C’mon, this is his classic Saturday night drive-in camp flick, for the mentally agitated among us, to be paired generously with Inherent Vice, and a downright lovely & insane ode to mid-20th century American popular culture - get on it.