At the mountains of madness..

[Mark Smith]

Sojouner wrote:

> I know I would love to hear how you came to read Pynchon,
> whether it was from a school assignment long ago or a recommendation
> of a friend.  I'm sure we'd all love to know.

O. K.  Sojourner, I hear you loud and clear.  As a relative newcomer to
the list I want to echo much of what you said, specifically the thrill
of belonging to a discourse community such as this. I too am blown away
by some of the postings, and find myself shaking my head in admiration. 
When I first came on the list I lurked for a few days, but couldn't
resist getting involved - it was just too much fun.  I do however
remember an offlist post I sent  to a kind-hearted welcomer, asking if
it was normal to receive as many a 60 posts a day.  It is taxing to have
to sort through so much dross (this was at the peak of the Jules
thing).  I remember saying how nice it would be if there were some way
of cutting through the crap, avoiding the timewasters and pedants, and
concentrating on reading posts from the "merely" enthusiastic posters. 
The merely enthusiastic readers are always the best, and I value their
contributions more than any.  

There was an atavistic shudder that went through my body when I first
read Lot 49, and I will never forget it.  Lot 49 was the first Pynchon
book I read, some 9 years ago, for a graduate level class.  The point at
which it all gelled for me was on page 170 of the Perennial Library
paperback edition where Oedipa ponders the 4 possibilities of
interpreting the meaning of the (probably)essentially meaningless events
that are occurring all around her.  It is the definition of paranoia,
and it is so tight and seamless as to exclude any chance of safety,
since all 4 options are equally fearful and isolating.  They are (in
essence): 1) either you have stumbled onto a rich and dense network of
meaning which is denied by official government delivery systems, or (2)
you are hallucinating that network, or (3) this so-called network exists
only to fool you specifically into believing that it does exist, in
which case it has meaning beyond just a practical joke, or (4) you are
imagining that solipsistic plot, which makes you a nut.  Oh Jesus.  

Suddenly, when I read it, the years were wiped away, and I was taken
back to the time, many years earlier when I was sitting in the dark of a
big yellow spectator bus, lumbering through the night on the way home
from a basketball game in some god-forsaken town like St. Ignace.  You
can look it up.  The stars were out full, the snow was dry and crusty,
and it must have been about 20 below outside.  We had been shouting and
sweating in the gym, as kids do, then bundled ourselves into the back of
the cold dark bus for the ride home.  At some point the heat kicked in
and two girls, whose faces I could not really see, turned and started
talking.  They were talking about the Beatles.  It was all about the
significance of their latest album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band".  Paul is dead, they said.  You can tell by the coffin he is
standing up in on the cover.  There's a song about a Walrus, which is
the symbol of death.  If you play part of it backwards, it even says
"Paul is dead".  At first I laughed, but they said, no, it's true.  It's
got to be true, think about it.  And as I looked up at the starry sky, a
shudder came over me, the likes of which I did not feel again until Lot
49. Because, even if it wasn't true, the fact that so many adolescent
minds had come to believe it invested the whole thing with its own
sinister reality.  It was a mirror on our fragile psyches.

A few weeks ago I was showing the recently released classic "The
Stepford Wives" to a film class I teach.  There's a line in it, where
the exquisite Katherine Ross finally spills the beans to her analyst. 
She says, "If I'm wrong I'm insane, and if I'm right it's worse than if
I'm wrong."  Yesssss... That's it.  Just like the body snatchers, just
like "The Prisoner", just like Horselover Fat, only TRP is tighter and
more comprehensive and ultimately more visceral.  Paranoia is the
condition of our age - it's a defining mode of thought in this, the
latter half of the 20th century.  McCarthy, Militia,
Trilateral-Commission, Roswell, JFK, Elvis, and so on.  And some of it
might be true! 

I come to Pynchon, again and again, for the sheer raw power and the joy
of his words.  I'm sure I am not alone.  It would be wise for us all to
hold on to that core of enjoyment, and never let go of its power to
liberate us from the conspiracy of the mundane which surrounds us.

Beechnut Review	http://www.traverse.com/beechnut
"Go bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,/Which, like unruly children,
make their sire/Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight."