A lurker emerges and retreats

[Don Corathers]

I unlurk, briefly, in response to Sojourner's kind invitation.

I'm new here. I am, regrettably I guess considering the current major thread, a boy.

I've been on the list about a week, after staying up most of a couple of nights carousing in the archive. What a great list this is: erudite *a-and* enormously entertaining. Somebody should do a book with this stuff!

Oh. He did?

My own Pynchon history, for the record: I was initiated by a friend one day in 1976 on a street corner in Buckhannon, West Virginia. We weren't going to see each other for a while, and as a parting gift he said, "Hey, have you read Gravity's Rainbow? You seem like the kind of person who would get off on it." Without understanding what a profound compliment that was, I admitted my total ignorance of the book and its author. "Try it," he said. "It's like smoking good hash." That's what people used to say about Brautigan, too, and it was good enough for me.

Some time later I did try it, and to be honest me and GR didn't hit it off right away. I remember a couple of false starts, and then I let it sit for a while, feeling disloyal to my friend and, I guess, not smart enough for Pynchon. (It is possible that I misunderstood his recommendation, and tried reading it *while* smoking good hash.)

It was probably a year or two after that that I came across a copy of V in a used bookstore. The circumstances were just right: I had some time off work, it was summer in the Midwest, and there was a patio at my apartment with a Perfect Reading Bench. I crashed through the book in what now seems like a sitting, but was probably three or four consecutive long nights. Twice since then I've read it more carefully, and V is still my favorite of the Pynchon canon.

But then I went back to Gravity's Rainbow (1.5 times; I'll have to start my second reading over, I reckon) and then CL49, and eventually, when it happened, Slow Learner. I read Vineland on a beach on Nevis. By that time I was using T.C. Boyle as a kind of methadone in the absence of any new Pynchon to read, and I remember Viineland as one of my more euphoric literary experiences. A guy I met on the island asked me for a book recommendation for his reading group at home, and of course I suggested the new Pynchon with great enthusiasm. Months later he called me from Boston. His reading group was halfway though Vineland, and they were all really pissed at him for making them read it. What exactly did I like about this book, anyway?

I wasn't able to tell him. I couldn't very well say, "It gets me off." (Actually, I think I did say that.) I tried, mumbling some lame shit about Pynchon's sly, subtle humor, and his ability to make us laugh at Awful Truths, and the transcendental politics of his stuff, and Burroughs saying No, I'm not a great writer, if I was a great writer, I could write something that would kill anybody who reads it and nobody can do that but Pynchon at least can make you sick, and how you have to work at it, but it's worth it. But I'm sure he went back to his reading group and told them, "I called the asshole and he still claims it's a great book."

And that's my Pynchon experience up to M&D, which rests on the floor near where I sit. I've taken a sip of it, but I'm going to leave it alone until I have enough of a break from work and domestic responsibilities (Hah!) to spend some serious time with it. And until that time I will go back behind my rock, passively absorbing the sometimes brilliant, sometimes goofy, sometimes tendentious, always fascinating contents of the P-list.

Don Corathers
crawdad at one.net