No fawning P-cultie, I

[doktor at primenet.com]

Meg Larson and Steven Maas's thoughtful ripostes notwithstanding, I write
to defend my view about the superiority of V. and CoL40 to GR.

One of the chief jobs of a novel, or any work of art for that matter, is to
render the complexities of the human experience in compact form.  Novelists
do this by telling stories, and if they do their jobs well, they tell us
much more than the information their tales present.

The difference between reading, say, an encyclopedia and a novel is that
the latter, through the device of the story, resonates with us, creates
those "a-AH!" moments where our understanding surpasses our comprehension,
and expresses truths that it would take millions of non-fiction words to
present.  Followers of Jung (or Joseph Campbell, for that matter) might
argue that we, as a species, are wired to react in these ways to stories.

I do not dispute that there are several stories going on in GR, and perhaps
I envy Steve Robinson because those stories "pulled [him] through the
novel."  But as Pynch himself might put it, the signal-to-noise ratio is
just too high.  Perhaps there are just too many plots going on.  With
respect to GR, I think that critic quoted by Shirley Limm is onto
something.  As paraphrased by Ms. Limm,

        Pynchon doesn't have real plots. He fails to follow through on issues
        and sub-plots he raises because he looses interest. Essentially, GR is a
        prose poem and the reader shouldn't be disappointed that the plot is
        incoherent.

I also don't dispute that GR yeilds more and more at each re-reading, as
does all good literature.  After all, a good novelist spends months or
years writing a book; it's unreasonable to expect readers to "get"
everything on their first pass.  But I don't think it's necessarily a
measure of greatness that some of the essentials in a book are so tightly
coded that it takes numerous re-reads to access them.  I am reminded of the
Monty Python sketch where an actor is discussing Skakespearean roles in
terms of the number of words each character speaks.  To paraphrase, he goes
on to say,

        But I don't want to give you the impression that it's just the number
        of words that matters.  As my old college professor used to say, the
        words are all there, really, you just have to get them in the right
        order.

One could re-read an encyclopedia or a dictionary and get more out of it
each time, too.  What we expect from a novelist, however, is a more artful
organization of ideas than we find in nonfiction.

I am not put off by the non-linearity of the plot in GR. I am a champion of
V., whose plot is perhaps even more anachronistic than GR's.  I derive some
pleasure from re-reading GR, but it is the kind of cerebral pleasure akin
to reading a well-written textbook.  But every Christmas Eve for the past
ten years, I begin re-reading V., stretching the book out through that
magical week between Christmas the New Year's when reality feels suspended.
The pleasure I take then is like the feeling Marlow's listeners must have
felt as they sat on that ketch sailing up the Thames while the intertwining
tales of Marlow and Kurtz are told.  There are two stories in V. which
intertwine at the end, and part of the power of the book is its economy of
plots.  GR suffers by comparison from too many plots; its strength is
dissipated.

Col49 is even more economical in its narrative.  Someone (on this list,
perhaps?  forgive the mushy memory) described the book as one in which
every word is important.  The suggestions that it be read as a kind of road
map to Pynchon's thought is intriguing.  Still, its "map-ness" doesn't
detract from its being, at its heart, a good mystery story.  The mystery
story is a form that has captivated humankind since the ancient Greeks.
That Pynchon can express so many fascinating ideas about communications
theory, the nature of undergrounds, the law, Jaccobean drama, paranoia, the
preterite and god-and-TRP-knows-what-all while at the same time spinning a
compelling story is a compelling testament to his prowess as a novelist.
GR has lots of ideas too, but since they are not hung on a framework as
solid as the earlier novels, the book is ultimately the weaker.

GR is a book famous for not being read.  Cf. Fran Liebowitz and Meg Larson.
There's a reason for that.

--Jimmy

http://www.angelfire.com/oh/Insouciance/index.html