True Grit/The Crying of Lot 49

True Grit - Charles Portis (1968)

After quickly reading True Grit, it is not surprising that in 2010, the Coen brothers wrote and directed a modern film version. This western style revenge story certainly seems up the Coens' alley, as it is intelligent, dark, disturbing, clever and even quite hilarious at parts. The tough, young main character presents interesting contrast with her older, grittier companions of the law. It feels like the details of the story's antagonists were rushed, but that makes for some vague, mysterious villains, which is always cool. I love the way True Grit is written. It's almost as if you're sitting around a campfire in the wild west with an old, close friend who is retelling his or her most recent epic adventure. Plus, there were certain elements of the dialogue that made me chuckle out loud, which is always a bonus. True Grit didn't completely blow me away like I was hoping, but it is a very fun novel that is interestingly and well written, and I recommend everyone to take a stab at it at some point.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon (1966)

I had quite the difficult time following the seemingly post-modern classic, The Crying of Lot 49, which is the first Thomas Pynchon novel I've read. I feel that the fact that I was let down is my fault. I don't know if it was distraction, or that everything about the book caught me off guard, but I missed so many details (that I'm sure were crucial to the apparent charm of the story), and quickly lost the plot. I would pick it back up from time to time, but overall, I feel that this reading experience was lacking, and I definitely intend to give The Crying of Lot 49 another shot at some point down the road. There were still some things I liked about it, though. Pynchon definitely has a style and a way with the technical form of language that is very appealing. Most if not all of the characters were quirky if not totally hilarious, and they had awesomely funny names, like Mike Fallopian and Genghis Cohen, to name a few. Also, I was intrigued by how insane, detailed and entirely complex the plot was for a 150 page novel. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending, which definitely came out of left field, but in a really cool way. I am not proud that I went to Wikipedia to try to make sense of all that I was confused about in The Crying of Lot 49, but maybe that will have a positive effect on the next time I read it.