Quote:
Originally Posted by roachboy
if pynchon is anywhere in this cyber/steam grid, he'd be steam. crying of lot 49 is early 60s l.a.. gravity's rainbow is a hallucination about world war 2. v is 60s new york. vineland an interminable wandering through the anderson valley. mason & dixon vaguely 18th century except for the mechanical talking duck. against the day is closest to steampunk proper and centers on the 1892 columbian exposition for a while before wandering away into colorado.
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I haven't read Pynchon, and so I was projecting based on what I thought after reading a brief description of
Gravity's Rainbow. However, having not read Pynchon is probably one of my greatest literary atrocities as a reader. I suppose I've always told myself that I need to finish
Ulysses before touching
Gravity's Rainbow. For the record, I'm about 1/3 of the way into the Joyce.
I'm also going on this a bit because of
Gravity's Rainbow appearing on Larry McCaffrey's list:
The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction. This was his response to the Modern Library's own list. He felt it was out of touch with significant works of the century, with regard to what we're most likely to be still reading years from now. I thought it an interesting response to the ML list and intend on hitting up many of the titles he's listed there.
For those who are unfamiliar with McCaffrey, he is, among other things, a critic. He is best known—aside from his studies on Bruce Springsteen—for having legitimized science fiction as a major literary genre.
Anyway, a few on his list are easily considered science fiction (Gibson's trilogy and the Le Guin), which is what intrigues me about it. I would like to read good examples of sci-fi that have artistic merit beyond the common expectations of the genre. I'm after books more like
Brave New World and
Nineteen Eighty-Four—that kind of thing. I guess I too am intrigued with dystopia.