Reading Pynchon
Blowing Shit Up With Gas keeps mentioning ATD and Thomas Pynchon. Why? Well, because my blog is obviously in reference to the secret organization in The Crying of Lot 49 (Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn!). Also, because I'm affiliated with a group of people reading Against The Day known as The Chumps of Choice.
So, couple o' things. First of all, I haven't posted on C of C for awhile. When I was posting last, there were only five of us, one who had pissed me off in the past (but who seemed to be getting better) and two who couldn't keep their comments straight and who were looking for a fight. I was the writer of commentary on a section where Pynchon, after more than five hundred pages, had suddenly decided to elevate a minor and unimportant character to the status of main character and that character was flamboyantly homosexual. I thought this was odd on strictly formalistic terms (you don't wait six hundred pages for a main character) and I felt that the character's homosexuality was a bit conspicuous. The two people in C of C decided that this was grounds for calling me, as tactfully as possible, a homophobe. One person even said that I couldn't take Pynchon's deviation from the otherwise stringant sexual roles in the rest of the novel--this is by the way a book where a girl gets double teamed in four states at the same time and a guy tries to get head from a dog. Deciding that these people were f'ing idiots and not worth my time, I stopped commenting. I show up from time to time to read, but I'm not in it for the fight. I'm getting my Ph.D. in Thomas Pynchon so it isn't much of a challenge for me.
In any case, Pynchon and his smarts... Here's the thing. Imagine that you're writing a book and you want to mention a movie where America fights the Nazis. If you pick Saving Private Ryan or The Big Red One, etc, then you're one kind of writer. If you reference a Daffy Duck cartoon, you're Thomas Pynchon. Again, if you're Thomas Pynchon, you also notice that Daffy Duck is essentially a sailor and that makes him better aquainted with a fight in the Pacific theater...against the Japs. You then point use Daffy Duck as a sign of incorrect military deployment and find out if there were any reasonably well known such faus pas made during WWII and if you can, in any way, involve Daffy Duck-esque metaphors into this story, or perhaps you talk about some valient fighting force in the Pacific that has duck like qualities and you can talk about how the silly soldier becomes monstrous when he goes to the Pacific. It doesn't really matter because...
Your fans will assume that you know everything there is about ducks, Daffy Duck, and WWII. This knowledge can be attained with a few hours and a google search. If you also involve Walt Disney trivia surrounding Daffy, you are a genius twice over and if you can connect Disney back to the Nazi's, well....every Pynchon fan will think you have inhuman intelligence. Listen, Pynchon knows a lot, but still his knowledge is not omnipotence. I know a lot about mold making, painting, artificial intelligence, greek myth, and cubism. If I write a novel that touches all those points, it looks like I know tons of stuff including stuch things as those that I've just mentioned...regardless of whether or not I actually know anything more.
Now, am I saying that Pynchon isn't crazy smart. No. Of course, he is. But you have to ask yourself, how much of that stuff thrown in is just a smoke screen--an overdose of information. I personally don't look up all those references. If I know them, I know them. If I don't, I rarely lose anything. In any case, half of what happens with Pynchon happens underneath that smoke screen. As always, if you don't watch the plot, you lose the whole thing.
So, couple o' things. First of all, I haven't posted on C of C for awhile. When I was posting last, there were only five of us, one who had pissed me off in the past (but who seemed to be getting better) and two who couldn't keep their comments straight and who were looking for a fight. I was the writer of commentary on a section where Pynchon, after more than five hundred pages, had suddenly decided to elevate a minor and unimportant character to the status of main character and that character was flamboyantly homosexual. I thought this was odd on strictly formalistic terms (you don't wait six hundred pages for a main character) and I felt that the character's homosexuality was a bit conspicuous. The two people in C of C decided that this was grounds for calling me, as tactfully as possible, a homophobe. One person even said that I couldn't take Pynchon's deviation from the otherwise stringant sexual roles in the rest of the novel--this is by the way a book where a girl gets double teamed in four states at the same time and a guy tries to get head from a dog. Deciding that these people were f'ing idiots and not worth my time, I stopped commenting. I show up from time to time to read, but I'm not in it for the fight. I'm getting my Ph.D. in Thomas Pynchon so it isn't much of a challenge for me.
In any case, Pynchon and his smarts... Here's the thing. Imagine that you're writing a book and you want to mention a movie where America fights the Nazis. If you pick Saving Private Ryan or The Big Red One, etc, then you're one kind of writer. If you reference a Daffy Duck cartoon, you're Thomas Pynchon. Again, if you're Thomas Pynchon, you also notice that Daffy Duck is essentially a sailor and that makes him better aquainted with a fight in the Pacific theater...against the Japs. You then point use Daffy Duck as a sign of incorrect military deployment and find out if there were any reasonably well known such faus pas made during WWII and if you can, in any way, involve Daffy Duck-esque metaphors into this story, or perhaps you talk about some valient fighting force in the Pacific that has duck like qualities and you can talk about how the silly soldier becomes monstrous when he goes to the Pacific. It doesn't really matter because...
Your fans will assume that you know everything there is about ducks, Daffy Duck, and WWII. This knowledge can be attained with a few hours and a google search. If you also involve Walt Disney trivia surrounding Daffy, you are a genius twice over and if you can connect Disney back to the Nazi's, well....every Pynchon fan will think you have inhuman intelligence. Listen, Pynchon knows a lot, but still his knowledge is not omnipotence. I know a lot about mold making, painting, artificial intelligence, greek myth, and cubism. If I write a novel that touches all those points, it looks like I know tons of stuff including stuch things as those that I've just mentioned...regardless of whether or not I actually know anything more.
Now, am I saying that Pynchon isn't crazy smart. No. Of course, he is. But you have to ask yourself, how much of that stuff thrown in is just a smoke screen--an overdose of information. I personally don't look up all those references. If I know them, I know them. If I don't, I rarely lose anything. In any case, half of what happens with Pynchon happens underneath that smoke screen. As always, if you don't watch the plot, you lose the whole thing.
2 Comments:
"Reader, she bit him."
(Wasn't that the quote?)
Thankfully, I was away during the flare-up you mention. And, I certainly encountered a few flare-ups of my own in the group (usually minor -- except one early one that really pissed me off).
I see your point, though. In fact, months back, I nearly posted a similar suggestion that TRP is actually mortal (and not omniscient). But, I nixed it at the last minute, not wanting to seem disrespectful.
But, again, I do see your point about writing specialized fiction (such as, for example, historical fiction or fiction heavily informed by science, math, engineering, etc.) and the "smoke-screen" principle.
I dabbled in writing a small bit of historical fiction a while back. That Pirates novella posted on my blog, for example, takes place from the Salem witch trials up through the modern day. It took a good deal of research, but I was able to churn out some convincing historical prose (IMHO), inserting references throughout to actual events/people. I think any reasonable reader would assume the author was fairly well informed about much of that stuff -- when in fact I knew only as much as I needed to in order to further the story.
Throughout ATD, I've been more or less focusing my energies on the way he uses (and abuses) language, structure, turns phrases, etc. That's where the value for me personally seems to be (as opposed to trying to master all of the political history, math, and geography) -- which is why, 800 pages in, I'm glad to see the use of the words "against the day" in a specific accessible context.
Yeah, it was kind of pathetic. Basically, I'd stepped on two people's politically correct feet by even thinking that I could discuss homosexuality. Actually, I think it was the title of my commentary that did the most damage. I used the word Queen as a double entendre (sp?).
In any case, ignore all historical realism with Pynchon. It's neat. There's stuff to it, but it's also dangerous. I know that you haven't read Gravity's Rainbow, but let me just say that one of the main forces in the book is the difference between WWII and its representation in movies. If you go through saying, "here Pynchon is correct, here he is not," you will completely miss the point.
When the Chumps started arguing about when the geiger counter was invented for characters who are in Oz, I thought, this shit doesn't matter, but when I said as much, I pissed off everyone who was doing all that Wikipedia work. Oh well, they're having fun and they're Pynchon fans so no big whoop, but I had to bail. There simply was no one on the blog who was doing anything interesting at the time I left and I couldn't really see any good reason for hanging around and catching shit.
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