My Thoughts on the Novel, Vineland, 3/19/2026….

I feel like I’m back in high school, having to read further texts just to give me some sense of the text I have just read. Reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, for me, is like holding your breath for the entire narrative, only to exhale and wonder what the hell just went on.

I am not knocking this novel, nor am I knocking this author, but reading Pynchon is definitely an experience, one I’m not too sure I want to replicate any time in the near future. His prose is dense, his sentences can last for pages, and the plotlines can be hard to follow.

As stated, I chose to read Vineland because I heard that it was the inspiration for the film, One Battle After Another, this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture. I was excited to do so, and I soldiered on, taking me a week to finish reading this book; this is a long time for me, and it is only about 400 pages long. (I’ll need a real palette cleanser after this one, trust me).

There are parallel, non-linear timelines in this story, at once taking place in the late sixties and otherwise in the early 1980s. It laments the decline of the hippie counterculture, only to compare it to chronicles of the neo-fascist tendencies of law enforcement during the Reagan years. The juxtaposition makes sense, pounding forth the message that anarchism is bound to falter when up against fascism.

But it’s the sentences in this novel that really take me for a loop. I had to read many more than once just to get a sense of what they mean. It makes me wonder about Pynchon’s writing process. It is said that he is a planner, since his novels require lots of research and involve intricate narrative structures, but after his prewriting and planning, what compels him to write such lengthy, clause-dense, comma-happy sentences? Does he plan his narratives down to the punctuation mark? Or does some of it come to him while he’s in the zone?

All in all, I give this novel four stars, mostly to congratulate myself for finishing it. Reading a Thomas Pynchon novel is quite the achievement, and I feel triumphant for doing so. But you have to prepare yourself to read his novels, sometimes before each time you pick up this book—mental calisthenics, anyone? Don’t expect an easy, formulaic, simple sentence mystery or love story. Read him at your own risk.