Letters to the Editor
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Regarding Pynchon -- Pt 2: Scorsese, Pollock and Us
(continued from Pt 1: Riffing)
Stephenson and Foster Wallace are telling stories. They have incorporated in successful ways some of the techniques of Pynchon to tell their stories in more vibrant ways that will appeal to some of the same attributes in readers who like that. But they are not doing what Pynchon does. He is using form as function. Not that he is the first to do it. And for the case at hand, it doesn’t even matter if I or you or anyone thinks he does it best. You didn’t even address that he does it at all. And that therein lies a large part of his deserved reputation. And you completely miss mentioning William Vollman, who is arguably Pynchon’s most genuine fledgling – prolifically verbose, artfully prosaic, thick, multidimensional, morally deep, and so smart that most people miss what his real points are; where Foster Wallace and Stephenson, talented writers both, are but traditional storytellers hawking accessible versions of Pynchon’s tools as if those are the main attraction.
Pynchon’s books are indeed about the big ideas, or the failure of people to handle them well and as effectively as they might want, in the case of Vineland. But he’s not just talking about them, he’s creating written works that are the apotheosis of what written works can do to move heart and mind by BEING, by taking the form of what he’s talking about. What is Gravity’s Rainbow about? Shortest and most accurate answer. It’s about the human need/penchant for narrative structure. And so rather than talking about that, he creates a structure and then on the very page dissolves that structure until at the end all that remains is…you. The reader. Waiting for the final delta T, in some movie theater, because we’ve always been at the movies…
That means that his works work as wholes, not as straightforward, narrative constructions with a beginning, middle and end, character arcs, easily readable morals, etc. The beginnings and middles of a Pynchon book happen inside the reader, and the end may never come – especially if the reader does not let their very state of mind be altered by the text, by the mish mash pastiche, flim flam thank you ma’am rhythm of the prose on the grand, multi-hundred-page scale. (Admittedly, Foster Wallace accomplishes the same type of thing in Infinite Jest; after several hundred pages it finally becomes apparent that the switching back and forth in time within pages and “scenes” all over a short span of “book” time is meant to mimic switching through TV channels – and the same sort of din effect that can happen when a person does that is affected in the reader. That’s the kind of thing Pynchon is up to. It is abstract, impressionistic writing. Surely you know the type.)
You say: "Admittedly, ‘Mason & Dixon,’ with its faux-18th-century diction, could also be trying, but at the heart of that novel were two characters who approximated actual human beings. What the uniformly young, attractive and randy characters of ‘Against the Day’ approximate is more like the cast of ‘The OC.’”
Hello? He's doing that on purpose. Not to amuse himself. To point something out about today’s culture. Perhaps the reference to the elasticity of time and bilocation struck you as fluff, as a "particularly vibrant" aside? I would hazard a guess that he was tipping his hand...the effectiveness of his choice to make the characters like that is confirmed by your negative reaction to them; if your message is that culturally sanctioned (nay, desired!) shallowness does not exist in isolation but might just be part of more dark and odious cultural framework (yes, vis a vis the implications for TODAY) then it makes a more meaningful metaphor to create characters who embody that rather than just talking about it. Would it have been better for Scorsese to direct De Niro to just talk about Jake La Matta’s violence instead of to embody it in the gut-wrenching performance he delivered?
Have you READ Gravity's Rainbow? Don't you remember that it's so hard to get into that almost no one HAS?!?!? I think 150 is the magic page number. That would be the “beginning” of that book.
Your review is off base in that regard and thus does a disservice to the book, to readers and to the idea of fiction today. You totally missed it. But as only someone could who has no idea what they're talking about.
E.g.
This is a piece of Jackson Pollock’s early work:
http://tinyurl.com/yyfrj9
This is one of his classics, for which he is known:
http://tinyurl.com/y4xnsg
Your review -- as well as that of Grande Dame Kakituna in the hallowed NYT – would be like the following:
While his greens and blacks are still thick and vibrant, this mess called “Number 8 1949" clearly lacks the psychic intensity of the work like "The Moon Woman" where he at least employed human forms that we can recognize – such as the crying eye – and thus care about; that reach out to us with human emotions that are accessible to us, also human. He might take a page from his pupils, people like Lichtenstein, who clearly understand the appeal to us not only of single poses, but also the human form in general. This new work is inaccessible and speaks to pretension, and lack of direction, not to art about the human soul.
Next...the finale, in which all is summarily wrapped up and rock music lyrics are quoted.
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Regarding Pynchon -- Pt 3: Thomas Pynchon Would Love to Turn You On
(continued from Pt 2: Scorsese, Pollock and Us)
Do you see, O Kazhakstani, O Times Book Review? Pollock, as we know, and I ask your forgiveness at the extreme example, was an artist working in the abstract. So is Thomas Pynchon. As a writer who is actually and actively attempting not just to paint a picture with words, but take readers on a sentimental journey through sound and vision, to, as in the case of Gravity’s Rainbow, bring the reader to no less a place and time then exactly the here and now of their completing the reading of its final scribblings, he has his sites not on mere intellectual prattle about the “big ideas” but in directly conveying the biggest idea of all experientially. Be. Here. Now. Northing less than enlightenment itself. Mason and Dixon was not about THE Enlightenment, silly! (Nor is he talking about the test-name for America’s newest Diet plan! Call now! Supplies of Enlightenment are Sublimated!) Nirvana. Bliss. These are the objects of his word lust.
And just as a reviewer who talked about Pollock's work would embarrass him or herself by missing the point that his later work gave him his reputation because it changed the way we see, so Salon has run such a review about Pynchon.
The point here is that Pynchon is not for everyone. It is dense, obtuse material, and his reputation is hardly built on the Pynchon-lite Crying of Lot 49. His work should not be reviewed as something that everyone who likes to read can or even should read. That is not to say it's elitist. It should simply be reviewed accurately. But to do that, it's essential that the reviewer knows what he was actually up to in his other works, and why his works, particularly Gravity’s Rainbow is regarded as important, as valuable and as meaningful.
I could only wish to be like you, so easily amused by the normal fare. Do you think it fun to be burdened with the need to read books that require access to libraries and the OED and that clock in over 1000 pages? Do you know how long that takes to read when you only plod along at some 300-odd words a minute? In between an office job, two toddlers, and the semblance of a social life? Are you aware of the sheer weight of the new editions of these things? It’s heavy reading! Not so lucky, us: the ones compelled, as if by some unseen force, to seek out and read tomes such as these.
You of course, are lucky, in that most people do not understand abstract fiction, have not read Pynchon and have no idea what you're even talking about. Or, for that matter, what I’m talking about. But they’d be missing the point. It’s exactly the fact that a discussion of something as important as art of import (not imported art, of course) can be nationally guided by people who do not evince a genuine grasp of why the art in question is of high and deep (as well as low and high, of course) cultural value and therefore cause a misinformed debate that’s the issue. It then is set up that the creative artists and not the critics must act on this.
Oh sweet Jesus. Holy Cow. Could it be? Are you secretly a member of the Counterforce? Is it possible? Is Madame Kak Utani really a Jedi Master, disingenuously dissimulating the turned up nose, teaching you her ways? You devious, cunning, thing, you! If that’s the case – if you’re all turning in these bad reviews so that the preterite masses are left yammering on about the wrong things so that the younger artists pick up the baton for the millionth time and forge in their souls the uncreated conscience of our race...then you are very very clever indeed!
And THIS, I dearly hope, is the charade you are up, O sly Miss Slashennburrn Mit Cheekiness
I apologize for anything that might be construed personally -- it's not. Just some professional banter!
All apologies,
Byron the Bulb
The San Francisco Bay Area