The Eternally Adolescent Crying of Thomas Pynchon
Nick Gillespie | November 16, 2006, 9:03am
Over at The New York Sun, Adam Kirsch gives a big thumbs-down to Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day:
"Against the Day"...will inevitably be read as Mr. Pynchon's contribution to the genre of post-September 11 fiction. Yet by comparison with the other major novelists who have addressed this theme, he displays a surpassingly crude moral imagination. This is a novel, after all, in which most of the heroes are proud terrorists, committed on principle to murdering plutocrats like Scarsdale Vibe. Writing about such characters in our own age of terror, one might expect Mr. Pynchon to have given some thought to the rights and wrongs of political violence.
In fact, however, his attitude towards violence is childishly sentimental, and ruthless in a way only possible to a writer whose imagination has never dwelt among actual human beings. Mr. Pynchon's heroes (the poor, the workers, Anarchists) assassinate and blow up his villains (mine owners, Pinkerton thugs, the bourgeoisie) with no more qualms than the Road Runner has about dropping an anvil on the Coyote. In the novel as in the cartoon, good and evil are unproblematic, death is unreal, and sheer activity takes the place of human motive. The silliness of "Against the Day" about the very subjects where we are most urgently in quest of wisdom proves that, whatever he once was, Thomas Pynchon is no longer the novelist we need.
Whole review here. Against the Day is a whopping 1,100 pages long, which makes it a good bargain, at least. I inveighed against Pynchon when his earlier, long-awaited doorstop Mason & Dixon came out. If we have passed out of an age where the novelist really is/was a culture hero (and I think we have), it's at least partly because of the failure of the writers of Pynchon's generation to fully engage contemporary America. In the end, I think he's remained little more than a clever adolescent, a wiseacker devoid of real insight into society or life, as callow as he appears in the best-known photo of him. I greatly enjoy The Crying of Lot 49 and parts of Gravity's Rainbow, but there's a point where the slightness of his thought overwhelms the cleverness of the prose and plots (such as they are).
Bonus question: When is Don DeLillo, a writer often linked to Pynchon and one whose novels often explored terrorism and political violence, going to write a 9/11 novel?
GILMORE | November 16, 2006, 10:39am | #
why the hell should we want anyone to write a "9/11" novel?
Novels, i think, are better when they're about individuals, and how they experience the full spectrum of life - not things centered on 'significant' historical events that are most often really just passing phenomena in people's lives.
Basically, I'm one that doesnt think "9/11 changed everything", or think it's something that can be used to tease out great literature that couldnt otherwise be told in a different context.
Part of the experience being in lower manhattan on 9/11 (as i was) was simple shock, followed by a necessary numbness, then the pressing need for a lot of strong drink.
I dont think many people standing under the towers watching that day really look back on the 'broad significance' of the event, or the diverse passions it aroused at the time; rather the prevailing feeling seemed to be just an abstracted, depressing sickness. Like driving past a very bad auto-accident and seeing children's shoes in the road. Most people walking home over the brooklyn bridge that day seemed to be emotionally unbowed, if a bit tired and pissed off. I was surprised that many people still managed to smile about things.
Most places i go in this country, I hear far more hemming and hawing about 9/11 and terrrrirrsts than you do in Manhattan. Most people here dont treat the thing with the kind of abstract emotional reverence that I sometimes find in flyover states. It's not that its 'not a big deal'; it's just that i think maybe we deal with it differently because it was actually REAL to many people who've grown up here, and by being real, it's harder to mythologize and make it into some broadly significant event in people's lives. For many, it was horrible, but it was mostly like a natural disaster, and a day or two off work. Sort of like the blackout, which to be honest, was really more of a strange/fascinating event in NY (everyone came out and communed in the streets; plenty of impromptu block parties - where 20 years earlier there would have been riots, crime, fear)
Anyway. I enjoy Pynchons sense of humor and his (over)clever prose. Only read his older stuff. What recent books DO you like Nick? Why pick on this guy when there's so much shit out there? Ok, I see why. Bad photo.
GILMORE | November 16, 2006, 4:48pm | #
If one's audience is populated with caricatures, it is perhaps best to maintain exactly that level of depth in one's writing.
It isn't just an adolescent approach to a complex issue, it's niche marketing to XXXXXX(that guy)
But, there might be reasons for painting shallow characters, telling a story in a superfiscial way that actually makes something more interesting, thoughtful, than may be apparent at face value.
I think you guys potentially arent giving pynchon enough credit for simply being an amusing writer. He is. His books are fun. Or can be for many.
If he seems to lack some kind of 'Deep Thinker' cred with you guys, is that his fault, or are you are maybe expecting everyone to try and be James Joyce and shit in every context.
I started thinking about George Saunders when you mentioned charicatures... he writes in a juvenile fashion, w/ ridiculous storylines , one-dimensional characters. But his stories sometimes provide great commentary on real modern problems, worries, fears, weaknesses, hopes... I dont know. Im just saying there is flexibility in how you can tell stories. For me, Pynchons 'terry-southern' style humor & his vomitous prose style are enjoyable ends in itself; worth reading whether or not they are helping decrypt secrets of the human soul/history/popular psychology, etc.
I've read most of delillos stuff; always sort of found him the opposite of your complaints about Pynchon - too aware of himself, constantly writing about "the writer" and the writers deep thoughts, the writer as political figure/victims, etc. I find him less 'musical' a writer, more ponderous and meaning-laden. Wanting to be just obscure *enough* to seem like art. Not always my bag. Although i quite liked Underworld, Mao II, End Zone, White Noise.
Below's an (large) excerpt from Lot 49. I personally dont see how you can hate on this guy too much... well ok, i CAN see how someone might. But I think his talent is pretty remarkable, his humor is unique, and his stories drag you from ridiculous to pitiful and back. He has a natural feel for how to name things;how the sound of words may communicate something in concert with 'meaning', or simply just add some emotional color. I think maybe I'm defending Pynchon on a technical level now. Anyway, my point was earlier that we dont necessarily read novels for the same reasons, and Pynchons successes or failings in any given area really arent necessarily the same for everyone, nor should we expect them to be.
Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of her marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American, into the layering of a lasagna, garlicking of a bread, tearing up of romaine leaves, eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight's whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband, Wendell ("Mucho") Maas from work, she wondered, wondered, shuffling back through a fat deckful of days which seemed (wouldn't she be first to admit it?) more or less identical, or all pointing the same way subtly like a conjurer's deck, any odd one readily clear to a trained eye. It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley to remember that last year at three or so one morning there had come this long-distance call, from where she would never know (unless now he'd left a diary) by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic tones as second secretary at the Transylvanian Consulate, looking for an escaped bat; modulated to comic-Negro, then on into hostile Pachuco dialect, full of chingas and maricones; then a Gestapo officer asking her in shrieks did she have relatives in Germany and finally his Lamont Cranston voice, the one he'd talked in all the way down to Mazatlan.
