Anyone in here read his work. A guy I work with is a huge fan of him and he has peaked my intrest, the problem is that all the reviews say the books are great but extremely hard to follow. Does he have any works that are good for a new reader of his work. I had bee told to read The Crying of Lot 49 to start with then try Gravity's Rainbow.
vineland is a decent choice in that the narrative is somewhat linear and the text relatively uncluttered (pynchon can construct sentences that can extend for paragraphs or even pages) but it unfortunately isn't quite up to snuff when held up to scrutiny against his greater body of work. LOT 49 is a GREAT way to start- as an old eng lit prof once said to me "you can read it in an afternoon, but it is the most densely packed 200 (guessing here) pages you'll ever read." probably the best way to get your feet wet with pynch is to check out his little anthology of his very early work called "SLOW LEARNER." in his intro he sort of trashes his younger self, but stories like "Low-lands" and "Entropy" give a glimpse of what's to come...i don't reccomend starting out with GR any more than i would reccomend "Ulysses" as an intro to Joyce...suffice it to say, however, that it is EXTREMELY rewarding when you're ready to tackle it...it is probably the most staggeringly complex piece of literature by an american author in the 20th century...even more remarkable when you take into account that he wrote it all in longhand on graph paper...
