Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Summary

Zero to Well-Read: "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon

Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky
Date: September 23, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky take on Thomas Pynchon’s cult-favorite novel Vineland (1990). With Pynchon’s name newly in the spotlight thanks to Paul Thomas Anderson’s film adaptation One Battle After Another, the hosts break down what makes Vineland such an iconic (and challenging) read: its postmodernist experimentation, dense webs of characters and cultural references, and unrelenting strangeness. Whether you’re a Pynchon novice, a dedicated fan, or just curious about the book everyone pretends to understand, Jeff and Rebecca offer a fun, generous primer—plus enough weird anecdotes and notable quotes to power you through your next dinner party flex.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Approaching Pynchon: Difficulty and Rewards

• Jeff and Rebecca emphasize that Vineland is “reading as work”—not exactly a beach read, but deeply rewarding for those who persist.
  • “Pynchon is very hard to approach. I’m not going to sugarcoat it for anybody… this is high-level writing. This is serious business here.” (Jeff, 02:11)
• Rebecca confesses that, while daunting, she’s glad for the experience:
  • “There were moments where I wished that this podcast existed so I could listen to other people tell me what Vineland was all about…” (Rebecca, 03:33)

2. Who Is Pynchon? The Man, the Myth, the Meta-Bit

• Discussion of Pynchon’s notorious reclusiveness and mystique—and how that persona fits the postmodern performance of his novels.
  • “This guy has never granted a single interview. I sent you an all-caps text: LIKE THE AUDACITY.” (Rebecca, 10:08)
  • Jeff wonders if the reclusiveness is itself a postmodern bit:
    • “There’s like Schrodinger’s gag. Is it a gag? Is it self serious? It’s probably both.” (Jeff, 11:11)

3. Plot & Setting: Vineland in a Nutshell

• The novel, set in 1984 California, follows Zoid Wheeler and daughter Prairie searching for Prairie’s mother, Frenesi—a former radical turned government informer—in a cultural landscape still echoing the sixties, now warped by Reagan-era conservatism.
  • “Residents are hanging on to the last shreds of 1960s hippie culture because Reaganite politics and social conservatism are sweeping the country... There are maybe aliens, definitely ninjas, government informers, shadowy forces galore…” (Rebecca, 15:31)
• The authors also love Pynchon’s signature absurdity:
  • “There is one landscaping company called the Marquis de Sade S-O-D, and for that alone, Thomas Pynchon should have won awards for this book.” (Rebecca, 16:06)

4. What It Feels Like to Read Vineland

• The experience is compared to manic, free-form jazz:
  • “It feels to me like jazz… jazz on cocaine and acid at the same time.” (Rebecca, 20:14)
• Both hosts emphasize that losing the plot is normal:
  • “This is not the kind of book where you should expect yourself to get almost the majority of it on first glance… There are rewards to be had there, but… give yourself the grace… keep going, take what you can.” (Jeff, 23:07)
• Pynchon’s approach is likened to Pollock (messy, yet intentional), and to performance art—meant for experienced more than “solved.”

5. Postmodernism, Satire, and Cultural Critique

• Jeff unpacks postmodernism’s hallmarks—fragmentation, playfulness with form, and a gleeful embrace of meaninglessness.
  • “Whereas modernism mourned, postmodernism dances to that response… There’s a jester, prancing through the remains.” (Jeff, 31:04)
• Satire of American life/media is central:
  • “So much of the book is about media and about mediated lives… Our politics are mediated through the media and managed by it and shaped by it.” (Rebecca, 51:36)
• The politics in Vineland feel eerily relevant:
  • “If this book came out in 2025, I would believe you.” (Rebecca, 71:57)

6. Strangeness, Wordplay & Literary Joy

• Both hosts rave about the sheer fun (and weirdness) of Pynchon’s inventions—character names, fake institutions, and bar names.
  • “The names of things and places in this book are so delightful… like Lewis Carroll delight.” (Jeff, 36:42)
• Standout lines and favorite bits are shared:
  • “Dangerous men with coarsened attitudes…were perched around lightly on designer barstools sipping kiwi mimosas.” (Rebecca, 58:21)
  • Bar names: The Lost Nugget, The Steam Donkey, The Cosmic Pineapple (66:18)
  • “Just a floozy with an Uzi, just a girlie with a gun, when I could have been a model and I should have been a nun.” (DL Chastain’s karaoke, 64:56)

7. Key Takeaways & Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Read It

• Good for those seeking a challenging, singular, strange, and darkly funny literary ride.
  • “It’s for you if you like a challenge, if you are willing to hang through the noise for the moments of clarity.” (Rebecca, 55:42)
• Not for those seeking easy, linear storytelling or character-driven comfort.
  • “If reading that feels like work is going to turn you off… it’s not for you.” (Rebecca, 55:58)
  • Jeff suggests, “It might be more like fishing… you have to go through a lot for these moments of strike.” (Jeff, 56:02)

8. Lingering Questions and Literary Significance

• Vineland interrogates epistemology (“How do I know what I know?”), the nature of good and evil, and the meaning of the “good life”—with little resolution.
• Both hosts agree: above all, it’s about art & writing itself.
  • “Postmodernism is always and sometimes primarily about itself.” (Jeff, 58:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Reading Pynchon

• “I think there’s many pleasures to be had there, but I am not going to say that it is… easy to get into. This is reading as work… serious business.” (Jeff, 02:11)
• “I now sincerely suspect that a lot of them had no idea what the hell was happening… because it’s hard to know what’s happening on the page of this book.” (Rebecca, 41:02)

On Postmodernism

• “Modernism mourned; postmodernism dances to that response.” (Jeff, 31:04)
• “It’s the funhouse mirror—things feel real, but distorted.” (Rebecca, 33:50)

On Politics & Relevance

• “You think this political moment is new. We’ve been doing this forever—or at least since the 80s.” (Rebecca, 70:02)

On Pynchon’s Humor

• “Pynchon is funny and can be a lot of fun.” (Jeff, 69:44)

On the Sheer Strangeness

• “If you gave this to someone who’s a casual reader… you would get like a, ‘What the hell did I just read?’” (Jeff, 35:56)
• “There’s a landscaping company called the Marquis de Sade. I have searched the Internet. There is one, but it doesn’t make t-shirts, and I am very sad.” (Rebecca, 65:59)

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Notable Timestamps

• 02:11 — Why Vineland is hard, but worth it
• 10:08 — Pynchon’s mystique & performance art as author persona
• 15:31 — Plot summary (alternate 1984, Reagan America, hippie burnout, ninjas, etc.)
• 20:14 — What it feels like to actually read Pynchon (“jazz on cocaine and acid”)
• 31:04 — Mini-lecture: What is postmodernism?
• 35:56 — “What the hell did I just read?”: For (and not for) casual readers
• 51:36 — Media, politics, and the theme of manipulation
• 55:42 — Who should/shouldn’t read Vineland—the challenge and payoff
• 58:21-66:18 — Rapid-fire favorite quotes, weirdness, and “the full experience of Pynchon”
• 71:57 — “If this book came out in 2025, I would believe you.” (timeless relevance)

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Further Reading & Recommendations

• White Noise by Don DeLillo — Postmodern, more digestible, focused on death and media
• The Candy House and Look at Me by Jennifer Egan — Surveillance, speculative futures
• Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita — California, postmodern, genre-blendy
• Interior Chinatown (Charles Yu), How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Yu) — Playful with narrative, perspective, reality
• Read Salman Rushdie’s 1990 NYT review of Vineland

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Zero to Well-Read Score

Ranked on 5 parameters (1-10 scale, 10 = best):

1. Historical importance: 5
2. Readability: 4
3. Current relevance (central questions): 10
4. Book nerd read cred: 7
5. Oh, damn factor: 8.5
   Total: 34.5/50

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Final Takeaways

• Pynchon is, paradoxically, both over- and underrated—deserving of his mystique but misunderstood.
• Reading Vineland means embracing not-knowing: its pleasures are found in confusion, humor, strangeness, and the occasional flash of clarity.
• The novel’s playful, paranoid vision of Americana—mixing mass media and radical leftovers—is just as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1990.
• For the adventurous reader, Vineland is both a challenge and a trip, rewarding those who linger amid the chaos.

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Ending Quote:

“Go the woods, smoke some weed, wait ‘em out.”
— Jeff’s (and Pynchon’s) closing advice for life, literature, and making it through Vineland (72:53)

Transcript

[A]

Hey everybody, Jeff here. Couple quick things before we get into the episode for the day. First of all, a lot of new people are finding the show. That's so exciting. Welcome and thank you for listening. Really appreciate you listening along with us. Reading along with us. Follow up to that to keep the momentum going. We've concocted a little challenge here. We were going to take a couple weeks off. No new episodes over the Christmas time holiday. But if we get to 150 ratings on Apple Podcasts, we're gonna do a bonus episode. Record it before then, but we'll drop it over the Christmas break. For your holiday listening pleasure, go to Apple Podcasts. Leave a rating 5 stars and once we get to 150 we'll let you know that we made it there. But thanks so much for listening. Really excited. We're having a great time. I hope you can tell that. And without further ado, let's get into the show.

[B]

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[A]

Welcome to Zero to. Well, read a podcast about everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I'm Geoff o'.

[C]

Neill.

[B]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky. Get ready to get weird. Today we are exploring Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, the 1990 novel that inspired Paul Thomas Anderson's new film One Battle After Another. Before we jump in though, if you're enjoying the show so far, and we sure hope you are, we would love it if you'd share it with friends or really if you'd leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you are listening right now. Thanks so much for supporting the show as we get started.

[A]

Yeah, believe it or not, that matters, Rebecca, as people find the show today. Boy, we've got. We've got one today, Pynchon. For a lot of people who know something about literary history of the late 20th century into the 21st. Now, since he's still cooking and there's actually a new Pynchon novel coming out in October is kind of one of those white whales, to quote another aspirational read or to reference another aspirational people have. Pynchon is very hard to approach. I'm not going to sugarcoat it to anybody. I think there's many pleasures to be had there, but I am not going to say that it is. Actually, it's really easy to get into. This is reading as work and it's not all work. It's not all a slogan. Rebecca this is high level reading. This is high level writing. This is serious business here.

[B]

It's what the kids would call brain on reading.

[A]

Yeah. And maybe get some other brains. You need several brains going at the same time.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

In several ways. This was my first experience with Pension and you know, I'm not one to shy away from a difficult reading experience, but the vibe I had picked up about what made Pension challenging to get into was not a vibe that I like. I'm particularly drawn to in my reading life. And so I will confirm this felt like work to me. I But I'm also glad that I did it. I did find a lot to enjoy and appreciate in what was happening here. I'm glad to now have a sense of what Pension is all about. At least one, a sample size of one. And I will not lie, there were moments where I wished that this podcast existed so I could listen to other people tell me what Vineland was all about rather than it wasn't quite a slog, but it was definitely work rather than 384 pages of work.

[C]

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[A]

Yeah, I mean I think it's so. It's so interesting to think about how this compares to award level literary fiction that we often talk about and read on on the Book Riot podcast. You know the James is of the world, the martyrs of the world, the Lauren Groffs of the world. Like that is high level literary fiction that has commercial appeal. Some maybe call it commercial fiction. It's literally like depending how what your snob factor is. But this is doing some this exists. I don't want to put it in a ranking. I don't want to put a priorities or like hierarchy. But this is operating at a different pitch than that.

[B]

It's doing different things with different intentions.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. It's not trying to be though. This is not a failed version of Colson Whitehead, nor is Colson Whitehead a failed version of this. They're just doing different things.

[B]

Colson Whitehead and Thomas Pynchon doing a Freaky Friday, each trying to write into each other's styles would be a lot of fun.

[A]

I don't know that Pynchon can be anyone but Pynchon. He's not an Everett, Right. Who sort of has a chameleon like quality.

[B]

Don't expect a lot of. Not that kind of range from him. And we should say, like, as I said in the intro, we're talking about this one. This is a little bit of a zag. If you've heard the first two episodes. Great Gatsby, Their Eyes are Watching God. Like well regarded popular canon classics, you're going to hear a lot more of those on this season of the show. But one battle after another is getting a lot of heat. I mean, a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie is always a big thing in Hollywood and sort of a. Not quite a four quadrant. But a lot of people who are interested in media and in cultural representation, presentations of what's going on in the world are gonna go see a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. One that's inspired by Thomas Pynchon, is interesting in like 25 different ways. And how much of an adaptation is it? How much of it is more like inspired by. People are going to have questions and so we want to be here to help you answer them. If you're going to the movie or if you just saw the movie and you're curious about the book, or maybe like me, you had just never read Pension before. You want to find out what it's all about.

[A]

I think a lot of people are going to. You may have a dormant sleeper cell pension interest. I'm really gonna use paranoid paramilitary lingo here because that's. As we get into it, you'll figure out why. But this is a chance for people to remember to rediscover re engage like, what's the deal with that guy? And so we're gonna talk about Vineland for sure. And I think it's representative of a lot of what Pynchon does. But also talk about postmodernism because that's the vein this book is operating. And Pynchon is operating in what it is and what it is. You know, talk about what we do and don't know about Pynchon, because that's the other thing. Pynchon himself is a mysterious figure, almost like he could be a character in a pynchant novel. I kept thinking about this the whole time.

[B]

I was so mad when I finished reading the book and then I went to go do my pension homework because that's the order you do it in. You read the book and then you.

[A]

Go get form your opinion, then get supporting stuff. Yeah.

[B]

And this guy has never granted a single interview. I sent you an all caps text like the audacity.

[A]

Listen, if I wrote V in 1963 as my first book and was a finalist for the National Book Award and were selling a lot of copies and still working for Boeing and you know, had it had a good military pension. We'll get into his biography a little bit. And it occurred and we weren't in our social media world of now what a flex it is to just be like, nope, I'm not. I mean it. Doesn't that sound like the dream, Rebecca? It sounds like the dream.

[B]

I mean it does sound like the dream. And also I have a lot of like, it must be nice.

[A]

It must be nice.

[B]

But pinchin. Yeah, I think he's trying to do certain things and that kind of mystique is part of it. Like there are elements of this writing that feel performative. That this. These books are written by a guy who's never granted an interview is. And he's reclusive and he only writes a book like every 15 or 20 years. Like all of that is part of the performance of being a certain kind of artist.

[A]

Well, and it might be a gag. Like that postmodernist thing could be like, is it. There's like Schrodinger's gag. Is it a gag? Is it self serious? It's probably both. Like that indeterminacy, a metatextual ness, a meta narrativeness about himself is like mind blowingly cool in its own kind of.

[B]

I'm messing with you just because I can and you know I'm doing it and I know I'm doing it and here we are together and I'm still gonna mess with you because it's either.

[A]

A personal preference or a bit. And if it's personal preference, amazing. But if it's a bit, the commitment to the bit is unmatched.

[B]

It's really incredible.

[A]

All right, Rebecca, before we get into too much more, talk about Pynchon himself In the book. We want to thank Thriftbooks for sponsoring this first season of zero to well read. You can go to thriftbox, thriftbooks.com check out all that they have there, including. I'm looking at right now 19 different editions of Vineland. Because there's the original paperback. You've got different versions. You can go find international versions, a French version. I'm looking right here at a first edition. I just want. I want you to guess. It's in very good condition. There's only one very. So it's kind of a middle tier. This is kind of like in. In my understanding of book conditions, it's kind of like rental cars. Mid size, standard and full. Which one's the best? Very good, fine and awesome. This one just called Very Good. Would you like to guess how much a first edition in very good condition, Sort of middling.

[B]

I did learn in my research that the first print run was 200,000 copies. That's a lot of copies.

[A]

That's a lot. That's a really. God, you're good at this. Excellent data point.

[B]

That's a lot of copies. But it's rare for first editions, regardless of print run size, to end up in good condition 35 years later, no matter what. This isn't. He's not a Nobel prize winner. It's not like top tier collector stuff. Except I'm willing to believe that there is a corner of book collector Dom that's like the pension dude. Like the die hard fans would probably pay a lot of money. I don't know, $3,500.

[A]

No, wait, $56. You can get that right now on Thriftbooks before the movie's out. I think we should speculate. What if we bought this and tried to resell it?

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

Because I will not name names. But I was in a bookstore that sells both new and used versions of books the other day as I was prepping for this to get my copy of Vineland and they didn't have it. They were sold out.

[B]

I really wonder, do people not know? Because the movie is not sharing the title of the book and it's not really part of the marketing.

[A]

Well, either either this place was sold out or they weren't carrying them, but I'm not sure. But you can go find them in Thrift Books right now. The. The imprint version is $19.20 in new condition.

[B]

To receiving this first edition you're going to send me for Christmas.

[A]

Yeah, I'm trying to find the least expensive. There's not that many inexpensive ones, it looks like. Even on Thrift Books right now, there aren't too many used copies to be had. So you can find a good condition of the original, the first paperback for $38. So you could go find yourself. Or you can find a new one there. Or, you know, set an alert, add to your wish list. And when one of these other copies crops up, you can. You can see Thriftbooks also tells you about how many of these editions they get. So there's this one edition. It's a 1999, February 91 Penguin edition of Vineland. Vineland. I don't want to say Vinland because there's a little town in Kansas next, where I grew up called Vinland. So I keep wanting to say Vineland. It says about how many they receive per month. So this one, they receive about six copies per month. So you have some sense, like, is this an impossible situation? Or. I could go with this sometimes.

[B]

So anyway, I ordered my new copy of Vineland from Thrift Books.

[A]

Very nice discount on it.

[B]

Free shipping. It was great.

[A]

Yeah, free ship. It's $19.20. So if you live in the US you'll get free shipping from Thriftbooks right now. And you get towards the readers reward program. They got plenty in stock. They say 50 available. I think that might just mean they've got 50 and a bunch more. So thanks to them for sponsoring the show. But what's this thing about Rebecca?

[B]

Okay, so it's written in 1990. It's an alternate history that takes place in 1984 in Thomas Pynchon's invented town of Vineland, California. And residents are hanging on to the last shreds of 1960s hippie culture because Reaganite politics and social conservatism are sweeping the country. The government is striding toward a police state. There's widespread surveillance prosecution of radical objectors. There is a war on drugs that is serving as cover for all manner of civil rights violations. Stop me anytime any of this starts sounding familiar.

[A]

Kind of weird, right?

[B]

In a lot of ways. And the citizens are numbed out on the tube, which is what they call the tv. Our main character, Zoid Wheeler, and his teenage daughter Prairie are setting out to find Prairie's mother, Franesi. She was a 60s radical who sold out and ran off with the Fed. And along the way, there are maybe aliens. There are definitely ninjas. There are government informers. There are shadowy forces galore. There is one landscaping company called the Marquis de Sade S O D. And for that alone, Thomas PYNCHON. Should have won awards for this book. And Paul Thomas Anderson isn't the only reason that the book is drawing attention right now. I think the current political moment, as I was alluding to and what the book is about, has caused a mini resurgence in book coverage that's referring to Vineland and trying to refract current events through previous iterations of radical conservatism that have showed up in fiction.

[A]

And yet. So the plot here is. Is really, let's go find this woman. There's Hector, who is a former DEA agent who's been. He's basically, like, addicted to tv. It's referred to as a tube. He's a tube.

[B]

He has to go to the tubal detox center.

[A]

He's actually escaped from it. It seems like everyone here has escaped from some other institution. Everyone should be locked up somewhere or somewhere or.

[B]

The day that we meet Zoid. Zoid is like, running free and living on social welfare, basically, that he maintains by once a year going to do his annual trans fenestration, which is jumping through a window, not out of it. And he has to do this on TV so that it's well documented that he has mental incapacity, I believe is what they call it. And then as long as he demonstrates in public once a year that he seems a little crazy, he will continue to get his checks and the feds will leave him alone until they decide not to leave him alone anymore.

[A]

Yeah, that opening set piece is. Is actually kind of amazing. That first year where we meet Zoid, we get a sense of what's going on because he wants to mix it up. So he goes to buy a dress. It's kind of. You know, there's kind of a reference to mash, right. This idea. Or catch 22. Like, to see him being nervous in the service, being crazy so that you can get out of service in this case, so he can continue to get. Sounds like a disability check of some kind. But he wants to mix it up. You know, he wants to go take a chainsaw to a local bar, but there's not enough media there. Everyone's expecting him. Like, that's part of it. Like, everyone's sort of expecting this to.

[B]

Happen already every year, Zoid's gonna jump through a window and they're all gonna show up and watch him. So.

[A]

And yet it still qualifies. Like it's an inverse of catch 22, in which he's. He's acting rationally. Right. To perform insanity in this moment is rational for him to sort of stay on the government dole. The thing that's motivating a lot of the actors, because they're sort of a detente that exists in the background of this is of a post 60s agreement between various parties. The DEA, the military, leftist radicals, you know, everyone that, okay, the 60s, we came out of that, but you're going to stay over here. You're going to stay over here, and we're going to fund everyone and everything's going to be fine. And then the Reagan administration comes in and they start cutting checks. So there's no funding for the. There's less funding for the dea. There's less funding for the institution for Zoid to get his. There's less funding for the Witness Protection Program, which Franessi and her paramour Flash and their son John are enjoying. So as that money dries up, it's kind of like the opposite of the worms coming out after a storm. As that money dries up, people start coming to the surface because they're no longer subsidized to say, subaltern in a lot of different ways. And that is where they start coming together, trying to figure out what their relationships are to each other, what they could be going forward. I think from there, I'll say this, that the plot is. I don't know what your experience of this, but the plot is more of a coat rack to hang things on than the thing you're supposed to be following the most.

[B]

Yeah, it feels. I was listening to you describe it and even hearing myself describe what happens in this book really doesn't convey what it feels like to read it. It's like, oh, that's cute. It's about people coming together to figure out their relationships. But it feels to me like jazz in a lot of ways that riffs on itself, that wanders away, and then comes back to a main theme, like manic jazz. Jazz on cocaine and acid at the same time.

[A]

Kind of free. I mean, kind of Ornette Coleman free jazz. I mean, maybe I think one of the frustrations and delights for me. And I'll say I have a. And maybe this is a feature, not a bug is. There are some moments, and I have an extraordinary long list of my favorite bits here, and I cannot get to all of them. But I did that both for you and for me. Like, there are moments that are just absolutely wonderful. There are in this book. And I kept finding. Can we just do. Can we get more of the hits? Play more of these hits? But, like, I have to remind myself that that's Part of the structure is to wander away, come back, alienate the reader, engender a feeling of strangeness, of what's going on. Because the. One of the thing postmodernism does, and this is inherent from modernism, is try to make you feel the feeling they're writing about, rather than just writing about the feeling. Like, you know, in psychological. Rather than just say, character X was feeling estranged and alienated from the world. Part of it is, can I, through the power of art and the incantation of Qwerty Ueyap, get the reader to feel this thing I want to try to engage with.

[B]

Yeah. It feels very noisy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that you're in. You're in a moment where a thing happens and we know who we're with and what they're doing and what they're about. And then one of those characters is riffing on something and we're gone for like pages at a time into weird stories that really do sound like that friend who is on drugs who is rambling forever and then has a moment of coherence. And if you zone out during the rambling, you're also going to miss the moments of coherence. Like, that was both the most frustrating and the most rewarding part of this reading experience was when you can stay tuned in and hang out for the ride that Pynchon is taking you on. In the middle of a paragraph, out of nowhere, something profound happens. But if you're just.

[C]

There's.

[B]

You can't just scan the page hoping to see, like, the next moment. It's not like scanning through the descriptions of whaling in Moby Dick. Like, there's not an easy cue. Penchen is forcing you. If you're going to know what's going on here, you're going to be forced to stay in with the text and in with the characters. And then inside that feeling that he, I think, is very successful at creating of confusion and worked up and head spinning, there's a lot of noise.

[A]

They are not similar writers by any stretch of the imagination, but for many readers. And I'll throw myself into the. I'll throw myself into this ring with my hat on. Is there's an element to reading Pynchon that's, for me, like reading Shakespeare, which is you can. You can let your eyes slip over sections. You know, this happened to me. I'm not gonna lie in the reading of this. I just sort of like, didn't get it. I zoned out. I look for the next dialogue break to sort of give myself a break. But that Is, I think okay is not the word I'm looking for. That is normal. And this is not the kind of book where you should expect yourself to get almost the majority of it on first glance at a normal sort of reading pace. If you have trouble focusing on any kind of reading, this will be extraordinary tough sledding for you. And I don't want to sugarcoat that there are rewards to be had there. But you know, if you find, if you try pinching and any more difficult stuff, I would give yourself the grace to be like, I just kind of zoned out for two paragraphs there. Do I need to go back? Keep going, take what you can. And if you want to go back, that's great. But these things are not meant to be single serving. You know, that's not the only way to engage with them as a single serving reading experience.

[B]

I totally agree. I've been thinking a lot about this and how we talk about books and reading as if you're supposed to be able to read the book and then have gleaned everything from it in one reading. Like, yes, I've read it. Check it off the list. Done, onto the next thing. But when people talk about art, that's antithetical to the way that we learn about how to see a work of art, how to see a painting. Teachers talk about, like, sit in front of it and look at the painting for 10 minutes. The new York Times has even been running pieces about this, like, let's all look at this piece of art together for 10 minutes and see what we notice. Or sit, stand in front of a sculpture and note five things that stand out to you and then change your angle and make five more observations. And that you could do this on and on repeatedly, like day after day or year after year. Certainly, rereading is a reward for most types of books, but I can see how it would really, you're going to get more out of pension with each successive read because there just is so much language and there is so much detail that you don't need every last detail. You don't need every last word. I don't think, I don't think Pynchon even expects you to come away having processed 100% of the words on the page. But if you did want to go back, and honestly I probably won't, but like, if you did want to go back, it. It would become richer over time.

[C]

Today's episode is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publishers of the audiobook Poppy State. A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings by Miriam Gerba Read by Miriam Gerba from the award winning author of Creep comes a powerful book about a writer at the peak of her powers, at once a love letter to California and a literary tour de force that tells the story of resilience and reclamation through relationship with plants, memory, myth and indigenous knowledge. Miriam Gerba has lived in California her entire life with its plants and soils, forests and ecology, immersing herself in the language of the landscapes as refracted through the languages and memories of her ancestors. In Poppy State, California plants serve as structural anchors in a wildly inventive work of narrative nonfiction that is part botanical criticism, part personal storytelling and part study of place. We love a non fiction genre, Bender, and if you do too, make sure to pick up Poppy State by Miriam Gerba Red by Miriam Gerba and thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode.

[A]

When did making plans get this complicated?

[B]

It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[A]

Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, There's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee and another strategy might be if you do summon the temerity to tackle something like this is when you do encounter a passage, a moment, a scene that speaks to you that you have a moment of clarity with. Rather than move. Linger on it, reread it a couple times, slow down, you know, use that speed bump to smell the roses at that particular moment and then the other ones that don't come back. I want to come back a little bit to this what it, what it feels like to read it. Because all these things are tangled. I want to do a little bit of this or why it's important section that we have here. I am not of the opinion that you need to check off or get stamps on your great writers of all time. You know that's not how I think about these things. I will say the genius of Pynchon. It's a unique reading experience. I think if you're someone that's read say David Foster Wallace and haven't read Finchen, you will find it very interesting because for example, Thanatoid, which is the zombie like half dead people that appear here, appears in the Pale King by David Foster Wallace. Right. So like they're, they're very much speaking to each other. I don't know my Foster well in terms of his biographies. Well, I could, I can only imagine that he had a dog eared copy of V or the crying of Lot 49 or Gravity's Rainbow in his rucksack somewhere. I think, and this is not my area of expertise, if you were to ask who the greatest literary postmodernist is, most people would say Pynchon. This post war, this book is 19, this book is 1990. But really he emerges in 1963 with V& then Gravity's Rainbow, which is sort of his Moby Dick that's won the national book Award in 1974. It was the book he wrote previous to this. It took him 16 years to get from Gravity's Rainbow to Vineland. That those, those couple works are what made him the master. And so what is postmodernism? It is a slippery thing to talk about. It's in very, you can, in the word, you can see it's postmodernism. So it is after the Hemingway's the Wolfs, the Ezra Pounds, the Gene Toomers, who were responding to a breakdown of traditional that was catalyzed by World War II, a loss of faith in the church of institution, monarchies, patriarchies, you know, sort of regular business operations is normal came to a head. And in all the arts there was a response. And they have some of their, you know, alienation, estrangement, fragmentations of points of view. I think the thing that's easiest for me to get my head around is that postmodernism is responding to modernism and also extending on it. It's not, not modernism, it's sort of modernism plus. So it has not anti modernism, so it extends upon that. But there's a spiritual difference that I detect and some people have written about where modernism saw the end of that crumbling of the thing, right. That they were responding to as mournful. Right. There's sort of a sadness in Gatsby, a sadness in A Farewell to Arms, a sadness in Virginia Woolf, a sadness in, you know, the Empty cup by James Joyce, a sadness in some of these works that that thing is gone. Where. So I have here Whereas modernism mourned, postmodernism dances to that response.

[B]

There is like a kind of gleeful anarchy to the text look, you know.

[A]

Kind of a jester, like, you know, prancing through the remains. They're not the dauphin who sees the kingdom falling down. It is the jester that is left. And that means that a lot of it opens up so many possibilities. So a lot integr. So here's just some characteristics, and it's not definitive, and not every work does any or all of these, but the integration of other art forms, references to other sources and genres that aren't typical of that art form, in this case, literature. So in this one, you see there's a lot of TV and movie, right? So much TV and movie blending of high and low. Like, you're going to get the body, you're going to get the risque, and then you're going to get these elevated pieces.

[C]

If you.

[A]

The same time, popular culture, advertising, the trappings of sort of Post World War II branding exercises, these giant capitalist brands and international branding is interesting engagement with mass media formats. It's hard to remember now that, you know, when Ezra Pound or TS Eliot are sitting down to scribble some poems like, we barely have movies. We have the printed word, radio, and barely have movies. So Internet and TV especially, and then the multiplex and movies. This idea of these giant blaring horns of consumer culture didn't exist for moderns. And it's really important in this book here.

[B]

Cable is becoming what cable TV was in the late 80s and early 90s, as Pynchon is writing this.

[A]

You will also see that these books, postmodern works, often do not care about linearity. They don't care about coherence. You know, they're interested in incoherence and how to talk about incoherence coherently is, you know, always one of the things that's at play here. I don't use alternate history for this kind of postmodernism because it's sort of like slightly more slightly askew. This is not, say, Philip Roth's what if Charles Lindbergh Became President. It's not quite that hardcore. It's like it's more of if you sort of turned your head real quick and it was a slightly different version. That's often the case here. I was thinking about this in terms of mirrors, right? Realistic fiction was trying to hold a mirror up to nature, right? You're trying to. Like, that was really important. Modernism, like, what do we do with this cracked mirror? There's These fissures running through it. We're seeing these weird versions of ourselves. How do we do that? I think of postmodernism, funhouse mirror, where they're like, you know what? It was always just a mirror. It wasn't actually the genuine article. So look at these weird ass things we can do with this mirror in different shapes or form. So that's my, you know, two minute mini lecture on what to expect from postmodernism. Rebecca, does that any vibe with what you understand or even your reading experience here?

[B]

I really like this mirror metaphor that you reached for here. And I think funhouse mirror is right for this because things feel real but distorted. It felt to me like I would believe that characters like Zoid Wheeler exist in a weird little town in Northern California. Going to bars with funny names, having strange drinks, tripping on their drugs on the weekends, telling stories about the good old days when everybody was radical. Like these kinds of people did and do exist, but that pynchant runs them through his particular filter in order to, you know, play with it. Like some of it is just for fun, some of it is just for fun that is clear on the page. Like that Pynchon was just having a good time. And that image that you evoked earlier of a jester, sort of like prancing through whatever a jester is prancing through the ruined castle.

[A]

I mean, that's. I do think of it some way that way.

[B]

I think that really works here. Like he's gleeful about the fun you can have while the world is burning down. And there's a really different flavor to that than, you know, like, I don't know, the common flavor on social media right now or what I imagine mass media coverage looked like in the late 80s and early 90s about what was happening in Reaganite politics. So like that there's a, of, like there's an escape valve a little bit. Like it lets out some tension that you can have fun with it. It feels possible to have fun with it on the page in a way that probably didn't feel available in real life. Like it doesn't feel available. This kind of glee, like Glee in the anarchy does not feel available to me in today's real life political moment. But that an artist can do that and, and have this distortion, I think intentional distortion that is supposed to reflect something very real back to us is really fun and strange and unsettling.

[A]

Yeah, Strangeness, I think, is if you were to, if you were to pick one word, if you, if you're Limited to one strange is not the worst way to go.

[B]

Yeah. I think if you gave this to someone who's like, a casual reader, which. That would be a very mean thing to do. But if you did that, you would get like a. What the hell did I just read?

[A]

What the hell did I just read? Ye. And I think. I mean, that makes the mystique of Pynchon even more interesting. Right. Someone who himself has, like, chosen to not like. Like a vampire. He doesn't show up in mirrors. Like he's intentionally, you know, he doesn't want to be represented. Weirdly, like, he's like, can I opt out of this? What do we know about him? An extremely precocious kid, graduated high school at age 16. He was writing short stories in high school and, you know, some of the similar issues, drug use, paranoia. He. If Pynchon enjoys one thing, it's naming shit.

[B]

Oh, my God. The names of things and places in this book are so delightful.

[A]

It's so fun. Lewis Carroll, like, delight.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's a great comparison. Having fun with what things are called. He studied engineering at Cornell and served in the Navy. Was a voracious reader from a young age. Went to go work for Boeing after he was out of the service. And that he started writing V while in the service. And then Gravity's Rainbow, which is, again, if it's about anything, putative subject, let's put it this way, is V2. The rockets, gravity's Rainbow being the parabolic arc of the buzz bombs coming into London from Germany. He is. He's got a math mind and there is a certain chaotic precision to what he does. That's. That's kind of hard to fathom. I'll say this. I think he. The term genius is thrown around lightly. He is operating on, like, if 4D chess exists, he is playing it and then watching us watch him play it.

[B]

That he lands the plane at the end of this book is astonishing. And honestly, like, faith that this writer would be able to do that was the thing that got me through a lot of my eyes really want to glaze over right here.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And again, just embrace that. I mean, I would encourage. I'm gonna keep saying that to people, and I think Rebecca's as good readers you're going to find, and she's got to have this. That's chaos. Is. I talked to Boris Kochka for a thing I did for First Edition a little while ago, and he did a kind of a Looking for Thomas Pynchon piece. I think when against the Day came out in 2006, and I sort of asked him, like, well, you know, as far as I can tell, he sort of lives up on the Upper west side and goes and eats at Zabar's. And I'm like, you know what?

[B]

I love that for him.

[A]

Amazing. Amazing. So I think, you know, V itself is fascinating. There are these two. It's in search of this being character entity known as V that has different manifestations over time. And then there's two main narratives that go towards each other to form a sort of narrative. V, like, that's what we're doing here, Rebecca. Like, that's just. And then there's all stuff in between that immediately hailed as what the hell? Like, in the O dam factor of 1963, when V came out off the charts. Off the charts. Like, what is it? It felt like a missive from a different A planet. V is not. I wrote here. V is not a book that heralds much of anything but itself is my line, which I kind of like. Like, it's a good line. It's about writing. It's about what Pynchon can do and is interested in.

[B]

Yeah. I was proud of you when I read that in the Notes this morning. That's a. That's a really good line. And I think that is also. It speaks to who will like and who might not like this kind of reading experience. Like, you got to be down for a book that is mostly concerned with itself and with the experience it's trying to give you.

[A]

I hope I didn't steal that. It's possible I cribbed that from someone, but I don't think I did. But if Zirta. Well, read [e-mail] if you know where it came from.

[C]

So.

[A]

So that's. That's kind of it. Like, he's been writing steadily. You know, he's written several books. Like, apparently he's writing several things at the same. But he's written. He wrote some other things as autobiography, like a little introduction. There's just not much. Rebecca, I'm just trying to say there's just. We don't have access to. Which I find frankly, kind of freeing. I am really enjoying that I don't have a pension. Interview in the Paris Review, Art of fiction number 281, to, like, go match up the answer key with the text with. I kind of like this.

[B]

It fits for what the book is.

[A]

Yeah, it.

[B]

Like, it just really does. And whether it's a bit. Or he genuinely wants to stay out of the public eye or Maybe both. That's kind of the ideal situation. It works for the kind of writing that he does.

[A]

It just adds a layer of. Of intrigue and possibility and curiosity that I think is pretty remarkable. We've talked a little bit about the reading experience. This is your first exposure. I have not read all Pynchon. I've read Gravity's Rainbow, crying of lot 49V, and this. I think that's all. What's it like to read this, Rebecca? We've talked about. What else do we want to see?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's noisy and chaotic, and I came into it with, yeah.

[A]

What were you expecting? We didn't talk about this.

[B]

You know, I think I had some, like, lit bro expectations. Some of them were fulfilled. But I think that what I've actually realized is that the, like, kinds of dudes that I was exposed to in my twenties who loved Pynchon. You can talk about Pynchon as if you know what he's doing, and he's so complex that you probably genuinely believe. I think these guys genuinely believed that they knew what Pynchon was doing. And having read it now, like, the way that they talked about it put me off of any interest to go find out what those books were about. Like, if that was the club, I did not want to be a member. But I now sincerely suspect that a lot of them had no idea what the hell was happening. And it was impossible to tell that they didn't know what the hell was happening, because it's hard to know what's happening on the page of this book. But, yeah, it was. It was chaotic. There were a lot of times that my eyes would glaze over and then I would realize we were back in action scenes. I was like, shit, I got to turn the. I gotta. You gotta go back a couple of pages, figure out where the action actually, like, where the jazz riffing turned into action and who we're talking to and what's about to happen now. And there are, like, elements from a bunch of other genres that was like, that's exciting and energizing, where you're like, oh, there's ninjas now, and these planes are hooking up to each other. Or is it aliens? Like, I have a note on one.

[A]

That's a tough scene to figure out. I'm still not sure what's going on.

[B]

I have a note that's like, aliens or just air pirates. And, like, that air pirates is a thing that seems more reasonable. That's like, the reasonable option of the two is also indicative of what it's like to read this, I think it's best broken up into chunks. Like, the chapters are not consistent lengths. There are some chapters that are five pages. There's other chapters that are 60 pages. And the longer chapters were. They were more work, to be honest. And I was reading under the Gun for, you know, my job. But I think if I had. If I had it to do over again, I would probably break the 300 pages of this book up over, like 30 pages for 10 days or.

[A]

And do like, 20 minutes at a time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Six or seven pages. And try to linger and slow.

[B]

And it will take you, like. I think it was about my reading pace was like half of what my usual reading pace is. It took me. And that was. I just didn't know going in.

[A]

And I should have gone slower or I could have gone slower.

[B]

I thought, okay, it's about 400 pages. I probably need like seven or eight hours for this. It took about twice that long. There's. There's just so much language.

[A]

Yeah. His interest, it's. It's hard to pin Pynchon down, and that's part of postmodern literature as well. But he. He himself would not be interested in someone making a cult of Pynchon, which I want to think is one of the ironies of being a Pynchon, bro. Right. Because even, like, we have a character here, weed alt, when who becomes an accidental, shambling figure of something, it's hard not to see Pynchon writing himself a little bit, like, sort of stumbles into being representative of something he himself doesn't quite understand.

[B]

Also, the character's first name is Weed. When, like, marijuana plays a huge role.

[A]

Huge role. I'm very interested in groups and subgroups. There's like, motorcycle gangs and nunneries and secret artistic cabals and the Lady Ninjettes. Like, there's all these little pocket universes.

[B]

And these weird surf bands.

[A]

Yeah. Bands and collectives. Communes of all kinds, he finds to be quite interesting. And then Vineland itself becomes a sort of decampment of hippie exiles and burnouts and those under the gun. He also, Brock Vond, who is the putative antagonist here. Even the police state is subject to the police state is one thing that he's interested in. Even these mechanisms of control and domination are not all powerful. They are mercurial. They get orders rescinded at a critical moment. Actually, maybe the denouement of the whole book, which we haven't talked about. Basically, the administration changes its mind and things sort of turn around and the hilos go the opposite direction. The vicissitudes of even the authoritarian state is an interesting counterbalance to something as all encompassing as, say, big brother in 1984.

[B]

Yeah. And it feels to me that felt a lot closer to being true to life for the moment we're in right now, where you're like, these are the fools that think they're going to take everything over. Like, look at them. They can't get their story straight, they can't, they can't make a plan. And when they've made a half assed plan, they can't keep it. And like, there are reasons to be afraid. And Pynchon has characters here who have real reasons to be afraid as well. But that when you look really closely, these guys are jackasses, right?

[A]

And the winds may change and they don't even know what reasons they're operating in. And they don't know if they know what the doing is right. And it may change tomorrow. So there is an unstability to the whole thing. Because one of the things about like a real dystopian, right, like, you know, Handmaid's Tale or the Hunger Games, it feels like the oppressive regime or even Star wars. Right. To the Empire. It feels like bedrock.

[B]

Yes. The institution is solid and it has always been solid.

[A]

And so the rebellion or whatever has to go big up the big blue monolithic or the big gray monolithic thing, or go to the fortress or do the thing or like, oh, here it's just kind of, you know, go into the woods, smoke weed and wait them out. There's an element of that, right? Like, you know, that's like these people, they're not as good as you think and they're, you know, kind of amazing.

[B]

We finance a reprint of Vineland and just put that blurb on the front and make a million dollars smoke weed.

[A]

Well, tune in, turn on and drop out. I mean, the 60s thing is, is.

[B]

Is there's been worse advice for getting through 2025 also.

[A]

Yeah, so I think I wrote here there. It's a study in contradictions. In contrast, it can be alternately extremely dense and then very light. It can be very funny and clear and you have character moments. We really feel like there's a connection happening and then being very abstruse. It can be quite body. You know, we talk about gender and you know, actually pretty good on gender on the whole. That's one thing I hadn't, you know, it feels more modern in that way. But, you know, we're cocks and Hard ons and having sex and all that kind of stuff. None of it is erotic. It's just like the body is part of everything.

[B]

There's nothing erotic about no. No novel. This episode is brought to you by ebay. Before all the algorithm fed blah and the endless sea of dupes, shopping used to feel more fun. Find that feeling again on ebay. It's not mindless scrolling, it's a fashion pursuit. And when you score that rare Adidas collab or the Dior saddlebag you've been manifesting, it's a rush. Ebay has millions of pre loved finds from hundreds of brands backed by authenticity guarantee. EBay. Things people love. Imagine fast hydration combined with balanced energy. Perfectly flavored with zero artificial sweeteners. Introducing Liquid Ivy's new energy multiplier. Sugar free. Unlike other energy drinks, you know the ones that make you feel like you're glitching, it's made with natural caffeine and electrolytes so you get the boost without the burnout. Liquid IV's new energy multiplier. Sugar free hydrating energy. Tap the banner to learn more. Used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist. New team. The new fragrance by Miu Miu. Defined by you.

[A]

I think here's. I was also. I was trying to think of some way to metaphorize or use some other artistic example to. To tell. To sort of give some sense of people how it is. And I kept thinking of Pink Floyd's phrase, the wall of sound. Actually, I think that's maybe Pink Floyd's one of their. One of their production managers. I don't know, maybe it's not even Pink Floyd, but this wall of sound idea. Like there's just. There's just so much in his world. Pynchon's worlds are overwhelming in their detail and their vision and their comprehensiveness. Like he will describe to you. Not just that there's a pair of like interesting buddy tow truck drivers who have their own backstory, but then the characters they meet in understanding their backstories have their own backstories.

[B]

Everybody's got a backstory.

[A]

Like, in a way, you feel like Pynchon has such a sense of the whole world that he's just telling you a part of what exists there.

[B]

And as a reader, then you don't Know which of those backstories are important until later in the book. Like, everybody in a scene gets a backstory. And a couple of those characters might show up later. And you need to. It helps you if you remember who they were. But in the moment, it's like, why am I learning this about this guy's sister and her hole? Like, her hole?

[A]

Some of it, I think, because he can. He wants to. It's like, I've got an idea or a little move. Or sometimes he'll set you up just for a pun. Just like a long thing will be set up for your joke about, like.

[B]

To go back to art a little bit. It made me think about Jackson Pollock and that image of, like, just standing over a canvas, splattering paint. And it looks chaotic, but there's an intention and kind of an order to it. And so much of it is the guy who's making the thing being able to look at it and be like, just a little more there. That'll be fun. And just a little more over here. That'll be good. And that it is controlled. He's in control of it, even if we don't feel like we have control of our own experience of it. And that element of postmodernism, I think, really works here. So much of the book is about media and about mediated lives. And there's even a quote at one. Somebody says at one point, if mediated lives, why not mediated deaths? Like how we see ourselves and our world through the lens of all the media that we encounter. And someone even says, about the only thing that'll get a fascist through is his charm. The news folks love it.

[A]

Boy, does that seem. Good Lord, just at our decade. Next time.

[B]

Yeah. And that our politics are mediated through the media and managed by it and shaped by it.

[A]

I was thinking about this as looking at a piece of art, like a big. I wasn't thinking about Pollock necessarily. That one makes sense to me, too, because there's a sense, both in looking at Jackson Pollock and in reading Pynchon, in my experience, at least of both, that if you stand far back, you get the whole thing, but then you sort of miss the details. And if you're real close, you get the details and not the whole thing. So it feels like you're always sort of looking at it the wrong way.

[C]

Right.

[B]

There's a way of being like, well, that's just messy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That this is the point.

[A]

There isn't a right way to. Like, you have to sort of think of them in both phrases. One thing that struck Me here is that there is almost like the solidity of the Empire to some degree. There is a. I don't know how to put a solace. A weird solace. And thinking that everything is a giant conspiracy. Yeah, right. Because at least someone's in control. Like. And we could then take the narrative back. It's a bad narrative. We could take it back. But Pynchon is sort of suggesting, and this was. I think this is a modern sensibility to some people too, that it's either that or just a goddamn mess. There isn't some one true storyline we should be on that we can get back to. People would rather have like a religion, have some. The Illuminati be in control than. No, it's just us bozos here, you know, sort of messing it up as we go.

[B]

We're coming fresh off of a Dan Brown read. If you want to hear us talk about Dan Brown's latest, that's in the Book Riot podcast feed and his whole career and the reason that he is so popular is that those kinds of stories about, like, look at the shadowy forces that actually control everything and you've never heard of it and now you're in on it. People love that. Our brains are really drawn to this sense that there is a narrative, there is somebody in control. There is a story that if we just tapped into it and I think Pynchon is playing into, usually the reaction to the suggestion that there's not something in control is like, that's just terrifying. If there's nothing, he's like, it's terrifying. Or maybe it's liberating. Maybe we should just have a party while the world.

[A]

Like, maybe we should just go out.

[B]

Into the woods and smoke some weed and wait him out.

[A]

You know, I think it's. I think one of the easier things to see because it's. Some of the characters talk about this directly is like, what the hell happened to the 60s, right? This is in 1990. So he's been riding it through the 80s, I can only imagine. We don't know, but it's clearly thinking about how do we get to Reagan from the Summer of Love, from Woodstock, how did. And this is. I think character says, how do we go from drugs being the answer to this is your brain on drugs, Right? There's some interesting theories. I'll save that for some of my quotes. I think California is interesting to think about here as a microcosm of America goes from the sort of pristine wilderness again, there are people living there, but, you know, seen as being in harmony with nature to the place that they shot the speeder bike scene in Return of the Jedi. Like, that is. That is like, till the George Lucasfolk showed up in Marin County. Like the direct imposition of media, money and modernity. Ooh, that's the 3M, which is also a giant international conglomerate. Like, that's not the worst thing to do. So I think of this image of Vineland being this trailer park with a bunch of TVs amongst the sequoias. Right.

[C]

That's.

[A]

That's not the worst way to. It's a good image to get a sense of what's going on here. The idea that everyone sort of gets everything is a put on and there's nothing being hidden. So Zoid Wheeler's ritualized expected performance of stage madness to secure disability payments. It's all a put on. Right? Everyone is in on the joke. That's not a joke. That is the real thing.

[B]

And he and the feds agree to this. Like, this is just what you got. Like, once a year you just have to show up and do it. Everybody knows that it's a mess. Everybody knows that it's a performance. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. This is pretty simple. Is it for you? It's for you. If. What, Rebecca? Did I write this? Did you? If I didn't write this.

[B]

One of each of us. It's for you if you like a challenge. And it's for you if you are willing to hang through the noise for the moments of clarity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

On the flip. Maybe not for you. If reading that feels like work is going to turn you off, can we.

[A]

Can we trouble work that feels like effort? Because work. I don't know.

[B]

Like, you wrote that sentence.

[A]

Okay, good. I'm glad. I don't like reading as effortful. Right. Because I think some people might hear reading as work as being like breaking rocks. I don't think. I actually don't think it's quite like that. I think it might be more like fishing, in which you have to go through a lot for these moments of strikes. You got to stand out in the river and you're getting bitten by mosquitoes. You're like, what am I doing this? And all of a sudden you get a strike. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And also, if you're looking for linearity or if you want a book that you could clearly describe as being either plot driven or character driven, it is neither of those things. There are characters and there is plot. And in a lot of ways, they're not the point.

[A]

Right. Immortal questions aren't asked which of these are primary? Here, I'll go through them real quickly. What is the good life? What do I owe my neighbor? How do I know what I know? Is this all there is? How to deal with the certainty of death? What else might there be? What's the deal with good and evil? It's about all of them.

[B]

It's about all of them.

[A]

It really is. I'm not. I'm not kidding. Right.

[B]

To some degree. It's about all.

[A]

If we had to pick two, how do I know what I know? I think is way up there.

[B]

And I think what's the deal with good and evil? Is stealthily a central question here.

[A]

The chaos versus conspiracy. It's like. Well, it's Nietzschean. Beyond good and evil to some degree, but I think it's maybe a little less. What else might there be? I mean, in a metaphysical way we get these thanatoids, but even that is like these half zombie people. We get the sense on the other, the other, if they were to complete their journey to wherever they're halfway to, is just oblivious. And there isn't sort of some other realm.

[B]

A little of like, what's the good life?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But largely, how do I know what I know?

[A]

There's a lot about how to deal with the certainty of death. It's like overt discussions about like, you know, sort of distracting ourselves. And if we had to ever come face to face with it, we'd have a different understanding of it. Are we sure this is about art and writing?

[B]

It's 100 million percent about art and writing. And it's a political novel and art is always political. So in like a bunch of ways, this book is about being a book.

[A]

My line here is postmodern. Postmodernism is always and sometimes primarily about itself.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Okay. Best and worst. I've got a bunch. Where do you want to go? Let's start with a few of yours.

[B]

Yeah, let's see. Dangerous men with coarsened attitudes, especially towards death, were perched around lightly on designer barstools sipping kiwi mimosas. Like whimsy. And the seriousness of life and death altogether, just a couple sentences. I just liked the sound of Furnesi had written into his life like a whole gang of outlaws. Like, I can only aspire to be described in that way, and I will fall far short of it. I'll be lucky if someone ever is like, she was a hell of a broad, but to be described as heavy.

[A]

Whole gang of outlaws. That's pretty gang good.

[B]

It's pretty good.

[A]

You're gonna make me weaken the knees with one of those. Yeah.

[B]

One of the things that Penchen, I think, is able to get away with here is sometimes just saying the thing directly in a way that in a more straightforward novel, would rub me the wrong way of, like, let me come around to these conclusions myself. But so much of this is chaotic that when he stops and has a character just actually say the thing, it's like, ah, thank God. And so one of those is men had it so simple when it wasn't about sticking it in, it was about having a gun. A variation that allowed them to stick it in from a distance.

[A]

It's almost like. It's almost like. Just like Oscar Wilde could have said something like that. Like, you know, a postmodern esque or Oscar Wilde. One more. Just that, like, he loves these little cults and groups and stuff. He's so fascinated by that.

[B]

The cult of, like, the cult of lady ninjas that have their hideaway in the woods. Tell somebody. We're notorious here for having the worst food in the seminar providing community. Like, I've gone to some meditation retreats, and I have experienced the food of the seminar providing community, basically in the woods of California. And that's a real thing. So this also makes me, like, what experiences was Thomas pinchin off having?

[A]

I was thinking about that too. He must be out there doing stuff because it's so embedded in the world, his sensibility.

[B]

And he can go do it because he's not like, his face isn't plastered all over everything. He's probably pretty incognito most of the time.

[A]

I've got. I've kind of grouped these, and I'll do a couple examples in each because I could do this for literal hours. But he is also in a different world. You can see I'm gonna make a Shakespeare comparison because even on the level of just description and word creation, he just makes stuff up where you have to, like, stop and think about what he's talking about. So this is just one sentence. He and Hector exchange the briefest of thumb grips. And he's just talking about a handshake.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And I was like, I never really thought about that before. That a handshake is just you. It's. You put your hands next to each other and then wrap your thumb around the other person. That's really. And then. So the other one is. They're talking about kind of the standoff where you have with people where no one's talking, you're waiting for someone to talk, and sort of this silent thing happens that you sort of do between each other and some. So they were having one of those four member eyeball permutations that finally nominated Blood as the one to talk to Zoid. I'm like, it's just in that little like there's so much creativity in there I just find so amazing. And so it can be really compact. And then I'll give one maximalist example. And this is a little bit long. And this is just an aside. This is Isaiah 2. 4, who's named after a vival verse, who is Prairie's boyfriend, who's the member of this rock band that also moonlights, is an Italian wedding band.

[B]

And that is what reading this book feels like.

[A]

Yeah. So he comes to Zoid with this business idea because he wants him to co sign. And Zoid's like, no one's going to co sign the loan with me. It says, here's I'm now I'm reading. Isaiah's business idea was to set up the first one eventually a chain of violence centers, each on the scale perhaps of a small theme park, including automatic weapon firing ranges, paramilitary fantasy adventures, gift shops and food courts and video game rooms for the kids. For Isaiah envisioned a family clientele. As part of the concept were a standardized floor plan and logo for franchising purposes. Isaiah sat at the cable spool table making diagrams of tortilla chips and pitching his dreams. Third world thrills. A jungle obstacle course where you got to swing on ropes, fall into the water, blast away at surprise, pop up targets shaped like indigenous guerilla elements, scum of the city, which would allow the visitor to wipe from the world images of assorted urban undesirables, including pimps, perverts, dope dealers and muggerds, all carefully multiracial so as to fend everybody in an environment of dark alleys, lurid neon and piped in saxophone music for the agro connoisseur. I mean, what in the world? Rebecca, that's unbelievable. There's so much about like that feels so contemporary. It's like you could like. Is it sort of like bass pro shops sponsored by cult40? Like I can see this.

[B]

You could like control f a lot of this book and move it into present politics and the rise of Trumpism and it would feel absolutely current.

[A]

Yeah, there are. You know what's interesting? And this is. Maybe we get into spoiler territory. This is not exist. This is not Camus. It's existential because like so many, there is a. What is the thing worth preserving? What? What, What Is it amongst all of this stuff? I'll spoil the very end for you. All right. Now, I don't have the line here, but the very end. Prairie, she's almost abducted by. By Brock, right? Yeah. And so he gets. He gets his orders changed sort of mid descent to sort of come grab her and she sort of wakes up. Also, she starts fantasizing about him because there's a lot of psychosexual stuff with the. With military stuff that happens throughout. But then she sort of wakes up and she realized everything was okay when the descendant of her grandma's dog is licking her on the face.

[C]

Right?

[A]

So it's like that. But there's this moment where Zoid is sort of trying to figure out how he's getting through stuff. Right. And his. The love of his life for nice might be gone, but there always be his love for Prairie. Burning like a nightlight Always nearby Cool and low but all night long so it's there for you waiting. That's like so tender and beautiful like that. He can do all this is unbelievable.

[B]

Yeah, he's playing in a lot of different channels.

[A]

Let me just do a couple more things. He. This is a thread. He loves to make up little songs.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

Just all over and you know, your mileage may vary and some of them are like, okay, whatever. But the one that got me was when DL Chastain, who's like this lady vigilante, ninja vigilante, gets up to sing just randomly kind of, I think in a karaoke bar. Or she maybe. Did she take the mic from someone? I don't remember, to be honest. And she sings the song that goes. Just a floozy with an Uzi Just a girlie with a gun When I could have been a model and I should have been a nun. That's a good tattoo as well.

[B]

It is a good tattoo.

[A]

Let's see. And it can be funny too. Like the. The prairie going in to teach the nuns and like making them food and them having their mind blown. What were you gonna serve them? She couldn't help asking. Dip. Chirped him.

[B]

Yeah, there's a great. I don't think it made my notes. But in that same scene, she learns that you have to use enough of ubi, the universal binding ingredient, which is Cream of mushrooms.

[A]

Cream of mushrooms. Like that was very Midwestern. I'm like, you're from Long Island. Pinched. How do you know our dark secrets of church pot? Lux. Here's just another one where the pleasure of the line can be so intense. He felt Like a basketball after a Lakers game. Alive, resilient, still pressurized with spirit, yet with the distinct memory of having been for a few hours expertly bounced. Like, what the hell? That's just.

[B]

That's a great line. I marked that one. Yeah.

[A]

I don't know what else to do.

[B]

Where else can we go on to my. Yeah, I want to do my hit list. This is an incomplete list of delightful weirdness.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes. This is related very much so.

[B]

There's a band named Billy Barf and the Vomitones.

[A]

Amazing.

[B]

As I said in the intro, there's a landscaping company called the Marquis de Sade. I have searched the Internet. There is one of those companies in this country, and it does not make T shirts. And I am very sad. Floozy with an Uzi is also great. There's a bar called the Lost Nugget. There's a bar called the Steam Donkey. There's a bar called the Cosmic Pineapple.

[A]

I think he just kind of wants to name bars.

[B]

I want a pinch and bar namer, like bar name generator on the Internet.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And then my favorite bit in the whole book is a tiny moment where one of the Thanatoids, who's, as you said, is like a half dead creature, is having trouble renting a tux because obviously a thanatoid needs to rent a tux to go to some event and is explaining that Thanatoids have trouble renting tuxes for all these things they have to go to because their credit situation is so complicated, because they're not quite dead and they're not quite alive and that Pynchon had sat down somewhere and imagined that this idea occurred to him at all. That a half dead thing has to, like, rent a tux and their credit would be messed up. Just, I found to be totally delightful.

[A]

It's. It's amazing. Let's see. Hot takes. You've got the best one here. But you go.

[B]

I think the people that are most likely to read and enjoy this book are the ones that are least likely to need to hear Pynchon's argument. You're probably already pretty on board with what he's doing. And then also, the book is not difficult in language or its ideas. It's that Pynchon never lets up and.

[A]

He doesn't give up sentence by sentence. It's a great way to put it.

[B]

He doesn't let up. He doesn't give you any cues when something important is about to happen. So it's an exercise in. It's kind of an exercise in, like, Persistent attention paying, but also an exercise in always being willing to pop out of the haze you've been in and back into a piece of action.

[A]

My hot take is a weird one. I went the other way. Pinchin's underrated because people feel like the hot take is. Pinching is what? Overrated? Oh no, that's.

[B]

I think that's such an established take.

[A]

Well, it's a hot take that people think is hot, but it's actually room temperature. But pinching is underrated, as might take. Further recommendations? Yeah, I think it's. It's not a read alike, but it's a fascinating companion to high dystopian like Orwell. I have white noise. I think DeLillo's white noise is a little more digestible, but operating on similar.

[B]

Wavelengths for me and more overtly about what we do to avoid death and the fear of death. When we read that together, I remember being like, well, I'm terrified that I'm gonna die someday, so let's go walk around the grocery store. Yeah, that's a good one, I think. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, or if you want to go like a little more OG Egan to look at me, her novel from 2001 gets into some of this surveillance like tech, not quite dystopia, but weird speculative stuff. And then in looking around on the Internet, I saw a lot of recommendations for Tropic of Orange by Kate. I don't know either. Karen Tei Yamashita also said in California, similar. Sounds like a similar kind of vibe. But. But I'm going to be looking into that one. I also want to recommend that you go read Salman Rushdie's review of this for the New York Times, because first of all, when this book came out in 1990, they got Salman Rushdie to write Incredible, the review of it. And it is a work of art in itself.

[A]

I also was just thinking that something like Interior Chinatown or How does it live safely in a science.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's a great. Is a good recommendation.

[A]

Again, it's different, but it's. You're going to see some homologous structures in those works. Three to five takeaways. Pynchon is funny and can be a lot of fun. I think that Pynchon is funny is not something people think of. I think often these big totemic works like Melville's Funny, Moby Dick can be funny. It's like everything. So one of those things is everything.

[B]

They acquire this halo of serious literature that really abstract obscures what the. What the author is trying to do.

[A]

Pynchon makes Hunter S. Thompson look like a finger painting toddler. Take that one out. Almost all of Pynchon and I've not read all of it would still feel cutting edge today.

[B]

I totally agree with that. Yeah. I think also you could just toss in like you think this political moment is new. We've been doing this forever. Or at least we've been doing this since the 80s.

[A]

It feels which the one battle after another title becomes quite interesting because I, I was like, is that phrase in the book? I don't think it is.

[B]

I didn't come across it.

[A]

We have here. Can you get most of this gist from watching the signal adaptation? There hasn't been one, but we're about to see someone. I don't know if it's going to be the signal one, but someone's using this to do something on screen. Which is a fascinating because I hadn't remembered how much of it is about film.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So much stuff about film movies and.

[B]

Our documentary making and. Yeah, I mean maybe we'll come back in here and have some. Some thoughts about the film after we've seen it.

[C]

All right.

[A]

We're running a little long. Our final beat. 0 to well read score. Each one gets a score from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest. We have five parameters. Historical importance, readability, current relevance of central questions, book nerd read credit and oh, damn factor historical importance. I'll float a number for each of these. You can tell me what you think if that makes sense. I'll do a first draft. I think six because it's not a signal pension. You go higher.

[B]

I would have gone a little lower. Oh, I think I was sitting in the like four or five.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Range.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Gravity's Rainbow being the. Would be the highest. Would you give that eight?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

We haven't read it, so it's hard.

[B]

I haven't read it like just.

[A]

But even as mind share, it's almost better to ask you.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Like I had not heard of the book Vineland by Thomas Bench until Interesting. Until this came up with one battle after another.

[A]

Readability. Okay, this is a tricky one. Four.

[B]

Yeah. It's not Ulysses.

[A]

It's also not the Wasteland where like what the hell is this?

[B]

Right. Yeah, I think 4.

[A]

4. Current relevance, essential question. I'm tempted to do 9.

[B]

10. Yeah, I. Yeah, I would give. You can give this a 10. If this book came out in 2025. I would believe you.

[A]

Book nerd read cred. I think there's a difference Here. Pynchon, I think, is a 9 himself. If you've read a pinchon. This one, I think is within that is. It's. Is it one of the big three? Yeah, I think it's six, but maybe it maybe an eight. Just for having one pinching under your belt.

[C]

Right?

[A]

Just having one.

[B]

Let's split the difference and call it a seven.

[A]

Seven. Oh, damn factor. Oh, boy, that's a hard one.

[B]

Tie to me, like. Yeah, there's just a lot and I feel like if I reread it, my o. Damn factor.

[A]

8, 9. 8 and a half.

[B]

8 and a half. That's good.

[A]

Yeah. So we have 5, 4, 10. So we're looking at 15 and a half. 25 and a half.

[B]

34 and a half.

[A]

34 and a Half for that. There we had the. Ann, thank you so much. I'll put this in the show notes. At some point, she made these graphs of the 0 to well read score.

[B]

Things, which is awesome.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Yeah. If you have a fun idea like that or other feedback for us, you can email us at.

[A]

0 to well, readbookriot.com show notes [e-mail] listen. Thanks again to Thriftbook for sponsoring the first season of Zero to well Read. Zero to well Read is also a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. And Rebecca, until next time, go the woods, smoke some weed, wait' em out.