Entropy

Entropy- a short story built on alcohol, a scientific theory and random combinations of East Coast philosophising and a dying bird. To be clear, and for the sake of full disclosure, Thomas Pynchon is one of my favorite American authors working today. There is very little about the elusive Mr. Pynchon that I do not like, or at least find endearing on a literary level. With that being said, I think those who do not proclaim to enjoy his densely manipulative texts have a valid reason for feeling ill at ease when seeing Entropy's plot do black flips and jumping jacks across the page in strangely beguiling patterns. Pynchon was once quoted as saying "Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength". Many people reading this work for the first time could probably come to that conclusion without reading a single biographical note about it's author. Yet, the question always arises when I am reading Pynchon in a group setting- Where does weird end and genuis begin? Seeing the dubious looks of my classmates made me wonder, as I described the plot of the novel in a concise fifteen line summary. Regardless of one's reaction to Pynchon's narrative tornado, it is undeniable that he has a sickening knack for pulling hundreds of disparate topics into a coherent, although rarely embraced, literary form. The end result may not always be pretty to read, but it is clever and more than a little self-aware, ready to pump you full of facts and leave you breathlessly wondering what the hell just happened. Pychon is a man with an infinite amount of intellectual trivia and the ability to spill it on the page using sentences that both contradict and support one another. Today was one of the best group discussions I have ever had about a novel, and there were many interesting points I has failed to consider in any of the previous five readings of this text. The party is entropy, the characters are entropy, the narrative is entropy, moving forward until it can sustain itself on new ideas no longer. Brilliant.