Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon Review (Unread 018)

As a reader, I like a challenge. A lot of the stuff I typically read would be, and unfortunately often is, considered trash by a certain other type of reader. Snobbish readers, the worst kind of readers ever! I love fantasy novels, comics, science fiction, crime fiction, and other genre works. I have no real interest in what people call “literary” fiction. I don’t recall who said it, but I once read that what is often categorized as “literary fiction” is basically just drama. Now, there is nothing wrong with drama, but why not have some fantastic elements with your drama? Still, every once in a while I feel self-conscious about my reading choices and I can’t help but ask myself “why am I ready this trashy shit?!” The obvious answer is that I love it and I love it because it stimulates me in ways that the books I read as part of my high school curriculum did not. I like novels with a lot of ideas, regardless of how wild and impossible they may seem, and I love it when those books take what at first can look like an outlandish idea and turn it into something profound, into something that focuses on a facet of human existence. Much to my dismay, sometimes the genre literature I prefer gives me big ideas without taking the time to develop them properly. It’s at this point that I start looking for books and authors with more ambition.

This leads us to Thomas Pynchon. I’m not sure why but I only discovered him recently. After finding out that one of my favourite directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, would be developing an adaptation of a novel by Pynchon, I started to read about the elusive author. He is an extremely fascinating person and his bibliography is one of the most interesting ones I’ve ever encountered even though I’ve read none of his books prior to this one. Something about Pynchon, something that remains just out of reach, absolutely captivated me. It also scared me a little. Here is a man who has such an imposing reputation that despite my rapidly growing desire to read one of his books I shied away until just three months ago. 

The Blog Fantastic 033: The Silmarillion review (Unread 001)

Like many other fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, whether you discovered it before watching The Lord of the Rings films or not, you eventually find out about The Silmarillion. There are varying opinions about this work but one of the prevailing comments made about it is that The Silmarillion is a difficult book to read. Having been forewarn of the challenges I put off reading it for years even though I really wanted to know more about the history of Middle-earth. For now, I’ll simply say that it was unfortunate to not have read it earlier. I wilfully deprived myself of a wonderful and satisfyingly challenging reading experience.

As most fans of Tolkien’s body of work will know, The Silmarillion was published posthumously. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, assembled the book from multiple manuscripts into a cohesive narrative. In doing so he had a lot of difficulty as many of the stories told in the book existed in multiple versions while other texts were incomplete or only fragments remained in the possession of the Tolkien Estate. In order to reconstruct certain texts as well as create original material to bridge certain passages together, the young Tolkien enlisted the help of Guy Gavriel Kay, a Canadian who became a renowned fantasy novelist in his own right a few years after the publication of the text. Much can and has been said about Christopher Tolkien’s efforts but I will not be discussing them here as I would like to focus on the published work, not on the editing of the book nor its merits as something wholly or only partially attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien. I must admit that I personally find that sort of discussion interesting though I don’t think it’s entirely consequential. One thing is clear, I’m very grateful that he and Kay took on the challenge.