“I can’t say it often enough—change your hair, change your life.” What’s impressive about Inherent Vice is that it’s still as quality as most of Pynchon’s writing yet is a slam dunk pretty late in the game. It’s in essence a rerun of CotL49 with its twists and turns and crazy all over the place plot points and the constant state of movement, yet obviously is painted this time in a distinctively hippie coat of colors, by which I mean tie dye and neon. Inherent Vice is by far the guy’s funniest- funny as his other works are, IV feels distinctly like a comedy and not just a philosophical/literary work with jokes sprinkled in. Sportello’s constant drug hallucinations and the book’s constant maziness really can make it a bit… er… hard to follow at times and even the Wikipedia plot summary won’t do you much good for a lot of it. A lot of the times the jokes are, sure, drawn in reference (the p-diddies acronym is pretty unfortunate), which I guess is alright considering it’s important for the 60s aesthetic and also helps elevate the feeling of this being a satire on stories that heavily pander to nostalgia or people who were young adults in a certain time period. Fortunately, the humor never feels unfunny despite all this. The cast of characters is far from P.’s most endearing/memorable (See: the whole sick crew from V.) but some characters (Sauncho, Jade/Ashley, Denis) were quite notable, funny, and interesting; sadly, this abundance of characters does cause Tolstoy syndrome (where you can’t differentiate any of the characters because there are too many) but that’s also part of the guy’s style I guess. Overall, it’s pretty funny and definitely a hearty victory for the guy. A pretty solid addition to the remarkably consistent Pynchon catalog.

V. is an insanely good debut novel, but just kind of insanely good even without the knowledge it's a debut novel. Like with a lot of postmodernism, Infinite Jest being a key example of this, there are definitely some eye-glaze-over sort of moments where the author cares a lot more about certain plot points than you do. Like, honestly, I enjoyed the Stencil chapters, but the Whole Sick Crew chapters are better by a country mile. I know that like all Pynchon characters are supposed to be kind of unlikable and one dimensional but the Whole Sick Crew is like the most lovably messed-up casts of characters I've read in fiction. Also, I love the songs. An absolutely wild ride, but it's a modern classic for a reason.

Now, despite reading every word, this book is a really quick read (which is pretty unlike most Thomas Pynchon) and one that, surprisingly, is able to cram a lot of information into your cerebrum. This book, even with its length in the equation, is a strange comedic paranoid philosophical mystery novel, one full of really weird characters, intellectually stimulating plots, encyclopedic references and the typical immature humor Pynchon has been trademarked with. It's absolutely a perfect fit with my tastes. We await silent Tristero's empire...

I’ve always associated The Bell Jar with Catcher in the Rye: both are relatively aimless journeys of extremely unlikeable (but so unlikable they’re likeable again) young adults who find themselves jaded with the world that surrounds them. Esther Greenwood is a deeply cynical narrator who fits with the unsaturated greys of city life. The Bell Jar is timeless, it’s a book that people even to this day are still fascinated by. Sylvia Plath herself was the textbook example of depression, something that has earned her a bit of a mystical status to the rare readers of my generation (I have two friends who regularly read :-(). As for my thoughts on the book, it’s really quite good. It didn’t really speak to me in quite the same way as the other books I’ve read, but regardless, it’s still really good. I also didn’t know what a bell jar was until I was writing this review, and after seeing a picture of one, using a bell jar as a metaphor for being confined and trapped in your own head is actually really really brilliant. Also, I wasn’t expecting a borderline memoir to have rich symbolism in it but hey I appreciate it.

“But look at the [stuff] that's going on in Zembla! Place is melting under the water, people are-- falling out just to try and get here, they're grabbing any kind of raft they can get onto, and meanwhile getting walled off.” -Simon Rose, Superflat (2016) Let’s look at Pale Fire from two angles: Pale Fire is, from a literary perspective, one of the worst books I have ever read. Words cannot describe how agonizingly boring it is, how pointless it all feels. From a perspective of satire, it’s… better. Pale Fire is best described as Nabokov’s attempt to troll the reader into thinking there’s some deep plot behind the book and an effort to convince the reader that reading it just one more time to see if they can uncover any more information despite the fact there’s nothing there in the first place. Charles Kinbote is easily the most annoying narrator of all time. The book seems to be relatively clear cut parody- the commentary offers very little insight into Shade’s actual poem, most of it being Kinbote either talking about his love of stalki- uh, being friends with John Shade, Zemblan Kings, or, more often than not, absolutely nothing of value whatsoever. The commentary provided by this book on, uh, really anything at all, is next to near not present. Like I said, this book is not meant to say anything; it’s just meant to fool its readers. The main character’s love of rambling off topic is part of this: how much can you tolerate before you see through the façade?