Damn, that intro was killer. You got something here-hope you write your own weird novel of american fractal sprawl. If the intro is any indication it will be great.
@@heartfeltineptitude3816 hell yeah! I just found you because of this, but I'm already loving your style. Honestly, crying of lot 49 has made me wanna start writing again, because I saw alot of my own weird, sprawling barely connected way of presenting the images in my head in Pynchon's style. Kinda gave me new hope that there'd actually be an audience for my shit.
I strongly agree…write while you are young and mentally more supple, more able to become en visioned and before the very world you talk about makes you too cynical
Searched RU-vid for Crying of Lot 49 right after finishing the book and this far exceeded my expectations on any analysis I’d find here. Thank you! My reading of the book also partially overlapped with watching the QAnon documentary on HBO which was an interesting pairing. I was struck like you by the relevance to 2021 and the slippery slope towards identifying with a conspiracy theory just to make some meaning of life.
This is the best thing I have ever seen. I am in awe. There is not point writing a praising comment because I will never be able to craft sentences as well as you. This is a masterpiece, and stands to make the novel all the more beautiful. I am beyond grateful to have seen this, and only wish this video never had to come to an end.
Fantastic, brother. An exploration of Crying of Lot 49 has never been done better. Made me want to reread this 😍 I can't wait for us to discuss Against the Day!
I mean this in all sincerity, I'd love to see you make more videos. This was such a great tool to contextualize Pynchon with, it'd be great to have the same thing for other novels
This video was phenomenal. I can honestly say that hearing you analyze this so passionately and talk about the relevance of the novel impacted me more than the actual novel did. I left the book with a bunch of half ideas and connections that I couldn’t quite make; a lot more makes sense now. Thank you so much for making this.
Never knew about this book until after watching Lodge 49 several times. Ending up stopping after a one page sentence I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around. But I should give it another chance. Loved the show! One of my all time favorites.
Great video! I just finished the novel and was craving some analysis. You definitely gave me a greater appreciation towards it. It’ll be cool to reread it in a few years. Loved the intro and outro as well.
What I really liked about it is that it uses conventions of a noir novel, but definitely plays with your expectations and uses post-modern conventions to twist what you'd typically expect from such a story. The combination of satire and wit juxtaposed with grief and tragedy was done really well and definitely makes it so special, as well as all the curves and deepening of the reader's confusion just when you think both Oedipa and you are on a cusp of some great revelation. It's quite an experience, one that only gets better each time you revisit it. I really liked it and think Pynchon's difficulty tends to be quite overblown and hate all the stupid memes surrounding it, as well as this notion that some books are simply unapproachable and that you should dread the thought of actually trying them. I see these buzzwords ridden videos "A GUIDE TO GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, HOW TO UNDERSTAND PYNCHON IN THREE SIMPLE STEPS!" and think people ought to remind themselves of the joy of reading and that books aren't puzzles to be cracked, nor should every book reveal all its quirks, secrets and depths to you in just one reading of it.
Hello, I got goosebumps with your initial description of this video. At some point in my reading of this book, I felt something strange. I felt it was a delivery van, and it traveled all over Europe at random, visiting several cities all the same. The road was endless and I never slept. I felt I was a machine, with the thought of a machine, without feelings, everything very mechanical and random. Well this book is very powerful. I don't use drugs, but this reading has taken me to some very strange places. Your description was until today the closest thing to the wue I felt, which so far I can't express in words. thanks.
I think I went into this book with the wrong mindset and sort of hamstrung my enjoyment of it because of that; trying desperately to make sense of the plot with notes, flipping back for reference or re-reading chapters entirely. I sort of missed the forest of the meaning for the trees of the plot. I'll definitely be re-reading it soon enough, a refresher before I open up my copy of Gravity's Rainbow. Great video, I felt guilty looking up help for what I had read but this is like a loose guide rather than a compendium 'facts' that does the thinking for you. Would love to see more of this type.
Well boom goes the dynamite. Great vid, top shelf hot take and closed with the exact scene that always comes to mind first when I think of the book. Keep the vids coming.
An incredibly insightful and expansive review. Thanks for sharing it with us. I read CofL49 in high school. Your video made me want to pick it up again 👏
Great analysis and summary! To me, the entire novel is encapsulated in the idea of hierophany, in a "hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning" (page 14) that consumes Oedipa, who is a stand-in for all of us modern rubes trying to figure out what it all means, and in the end, it all means...nothing? The world is an unknowable cypher, an elaborate practical joke, an ancient conspiracy, a dirty cover-up, a bad movie mistaken for history by its narcissistic protagonist, or merely the surface level of the machinations of rich evil-doers so entrenched in history that they constitute an unknowable class, god-like and petty. Fascinating stuff. Your assertion that it's about a "pre-apocalyptic" world is spot on, I think. Maybe it's that the hidden worlds Pynchon hints at are always churning away at their evil schemes; maybe it's that there is a new pre-apocalypse forming every day, fueled by the convoluted schemings of the last. The Cold War, after all, was WWIII carried out in shadows, and started the moment the second world war ended. We, like Oedipa, are constantly trying to find clarity by ascertaining the source of things, and yet the truth is that it's all just one big fractal, spiraling out from another.
I like your film analogy. Something about the slow unraveling of the plot of the trystero gives me almost a twin peaks/ David Lynch kind of a vibe and I really apply that imagery to the book as I read it
Bravo! I second the motion of wanting to reread it more now, especially since I read it when I was in diapers. Maybe after I read the hefty handful left. Have you seen that crazy documentary on Pynchon?
