I’m not exactly sure why I picked up a hardback first edition of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland the other day. I was killing a spare hour in a used bookstore, and I started handling the thing—started skimming again. I’ve made a few attempts at Vineland but it’s never fully hooked me. I can’t get past page 92. But so well anyway I ended up getting it (for five bucks), perhaps as a means to motivate myself to finally finishing it next year. Vineland and Bleeding Edge are the only Pynchon novels I haven’t finished—I still don’t own Bleeding Edge, actually, having checked it out from the library twice and failed to make anything like a dent in it. The copy of Vineland I tried on before a few times is Penguin’s 1991 paperback. The cover is ugly as hell, and my copy is cut cover remainder; I found it in an inventory room in the high school I used to work at. There were at least a dozen remaindered copies of Vineland there. I doubt anyone misses this one:
Bleeding Edge keeps getting better.
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Adding it to the Goodreads list!
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I have never been able to finish Vineland either. Maybe I’ll try again. I was enthralled non stop with BLEEDING EDGE. It is so fine a seeing of the US since 9-11.
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I have that one in paperback. I loved it and it’s still the only Pynchon I’ve read!
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Convince me then.
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Vineland?
Really, don’t bother.
Read ‘Crying’ again…?
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They are all wonderful.
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The Vineland paperback cover is one of my favorites.

THIS is the ugliest Vineland cover:
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Ha! This doesn’t even look real…
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