Help me decide my 2nd Pynchon
TL;DR - Which order: ‘CoL49 -> V -> GR -> Everything else’, or ‘CoL49 -> VL -> IV -> Everything else’
Flair says ‘where to start’, but I just finished CoL49 as my first Pynchon and am now interested in where to go from here. My first inclination was to follow the order I’ve seen mentioned before: CoL49 -> V -> GR, as GR has kinda been a bucket list book for me for the last several years, but I wanted to work up to it. As a millennial California->East coast transplant. I think the parts of CoL49 that resonated with me the most were not the 60’s elements, but the undercurrents of California culture that really reminded me of home (even in very subliminal or abstract ways). For that reason, I thought maybe the ‘California Trilogy’ would make sense as an alternative intro path. I’m usually a completist with authors, and I have a sneaking suspicion Pynchon is going to be one of those authors whom I’ve read everything. Generally speaking, I like to start at the beginning of an author’s bibliography, which is kind of the impetus for the question, as I know the California trilogy will take me off the “main path”. I’m mostly wondering if there are some callbacks/references to books like V and GR in his later books that might be missed without reading them first. If so, then my decision will probably be publication order. If not, then I’ll delve into the California trilogy and go from there. ‘Preciate you guys!