Idolatry

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

KENNETH HOUGHTON writes:

  [re American Plastic]

>      Is it possible that the essay wasn't discussed by anyone who read it 
>      because we all found it more accurate than not?

I have only read a bit of the essay but I recall the quotes you cite.
I did not respond to them previously because I find they betray a
severe lack of understanding of Pynchon's writing. They are too far
off the mark to merit a response. But I will provide one now.

Vidal says:
>      "It is curious to read a work [_GR_] that excites the imagination but 
>      disturbs the aesthetic sense....

In what sense is Vidal's aesthetic sense disturbed? Does the poor dear
mean that reading about coprophilia is all just too much for him, that
sluicing round the toilet bend of someone's guilty psyche affects his
stomach so much that he cannot engage his finer feelings? Or is he
really intending this as a critical comment, applicable say to
Pynchon's narrative technique, prose style, characterisation, plotting
etc that they betray certain structural and aesthetic unities, the
which Vidal finds clumsy, bathetic, half-baked or whatever?

Let us first address content. Irrespective of questions of
squirmishness is there any justification for all this shit-eating usw.
Well, yes there is and Vidal obviously has not read carefully enough
to see it. He clearly has not twigged onto the significance of
garbage, waste, all that fecundity stewing under piles of discarded
and decaying matter. He clearly does not understand how Pynchon has
constructed an inspiring philosophy around the interweaving of organic
decay and organic growth, of extinction and transformation. This is
one of the central themes in GR, Lot 49, V, Lowlands, Entropy. The
opportunity for growth, variation and self-expression in amongst rot
and decay, local pockets of order evading the entropy police, this
theme is inextricably woven into GR's death-obsessed History of the
World providing a candle of consolation and optimism. In other words
it all went over Vidal's head and having failed to engage his brain he
was left inspecting his navel.

Ok well, let's give Vidal the benefit of the doubt and assume that he
has been offended in his professional role of literary aesthete. Is
Pynchon's prose so clumsy and difficult, so amateur?

More Vidal:
>      To compare Pynchon with Joyce, say, is 
>      to compare a kindergartner to a graduate student (parenthetic 
>      omitted). Pynchon's prose rattles on and on, broken by occasionally 
>      lengthy songs even bit as bad, lyrically, as those of  Bob Dylan.

Pynchon's prose rattles on and on? Does he say anything more detailed
than this? I hope so. I recall Stephen Weisenburger's Warwick paper
considering the narrative structure in section 7 of part 1 (the
section starting with Katje in front of a hidden camera). Radical,
innovative, complex all might be suitable qualifiers. But `rattles on
and on' is more suggestive of rambling, disorganized, padded with
irrelevant detail. Stephen's analysis showed that Pynchon is very
clear exactly where he is taking his dialogue and why. In particular
there is a clear attempt here (and elsewhere too but here most
obviously) to organise the presentation so it mimics narrative effects
used in film (although there is more to it than that).

Obviously Vidal must be unaware of how carefully Pynchon stages the
transitions of place and time which trace us backward and forward
through Katje's ancestry. Was he aware of exactly why Slothrop's
amytal dream took its various twists and turns beyond the U bend, of
the careful insertion of historical, social and political detail, the
clearly marked distinction between present reality as relayed by
Slothrop's doped observations of his doctors the past reality narrated
in his memories and the amytal fantasy which we suddenly switch into
as Slothrop lingers over the toilet bowl. This is not a ramble, nor is
it just a simple borrowing from film of the seque into a flashback, a
fantasy or a dance number. No, it is also a careful dissection of the
different layers of a man's consciousness as he descends into the
depths of a drug induced stupor. And the echo in that descent of
Orpheus, Dante or maybe even a junkie coming down from his anaesthetic
mindless pleasure trip (hey, why stop at a junkie, we can even
implicate whole nations, races and Empires in this bad trip) - such
echoes are carefully implied by a master craftsman. Rattling?

Well, maybe Vidal just does not like Pynchon's tone/style. Personally,
I was struck again and again by the resounding poetry of Pynchon's
prose and the precision with which he matches vocabulary and inflexion
to implication. Right from `A screaming comes across the sky' to `Now
everyone'. Recall e.g. the Hooker quote in part 1 We would have a
Garden Love of God's own planting' followed by `How Slothrop's garden
grows . . . forget-me-nots, love-in-idleness' etc. A beautifully
lyrical evocation of Slothrop's personal London, his anarchic bower of
bliss. Remember the scene where the bugs go tumbling
ass-over-teakettle through the baby's manger that ends `Is the baby
laughing or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?' The detailed
concentration on the arbitrary and meaningless tribulations suffered
by the bugs in the midst of the momentous events unfolding above their
heads (pun intended) as well as being incredibly exact and succinct
description also serves to distance the two sets of events delineating
a microcosm within the macrocosm and thereby establishing the obvious
metaphysical and theological implications. If I had the book I could
easily find line after line of ringing poetry, anatomically-precise
description, chillingly abrupt switches from pathos to bathos to
horror. On the strength of what you cite from Vidal it still looks
like he only read the book in the sense of traversing the pages from 1
to 773 (or whatever it is - actually revise that to pages from 1 to
somewhere around say, 73)

As for the songs . . . I suspect Vidal's misunderstanding of why the
narrative flows along the paths it does means that to him these songs
do look peculiar and out of place. What does he find so objectionable
about them? In part they represent tunes in the head of the
characters, the several tunes which I know have been tied down being
popular songs from the period. But the lyrics - as bad as Bob Dylan?
Well, some of them are pretty corny e.g. the rocket limericks but a
lot of them are extremely clever. I would say nearer to Tom Lehrer
than Bob Dylan (which I consider extremely high praise although I get
the impression that Vidal is somewhat of a snob about music and would
concur with a wholehearted `my point', precisely).

The songs do have a purpose, though. They provide a satirical running
commentary on the progress of events form a different perspective to
that of the narrrator(s). Most of the straight narrative tends not to
jump out of the page and refer to itself or use tricks like addressing
the reader as you and so on. usually the narrator either describes
details of the scene - location, characters actions, reactions and
thoughts, events etc - or amplifies a detail or theme by describing
events outside the frame of the scene (and sometimes even the book
e.g. pointers to IG Farben, the boardrooms of America etc). But with a
few notable exceptions it is essentially descriptive. The songs are
not actually sung by the characters (the confected war-time reality of
the story can stretch to include descriptions of the character's
fantasies, dreams and memories but clearly we are meant to suspend our
belief when they burst into song just as we happily accept the
nonsensical convention that the stage is the Wild West when watching
Oklahoma but are not thereby tempted to conclude that the writers'
historical sense is so adrift that they believe cowboys actually
performed song and dance routines between cattle runs.

Vidal again:
>      "...In fact, I suspect the energy expended in reading _GR_ is, for 
>      anyone, rather greater than that expended by Pynchon in the actual 
>      writing."

Well, it may have taken me some time to appreciate the complexities of
Pynhcon's writing but that's more a testament to my education than
Pynchon's lack of care in producing the book. I would not like to say
whether it is more or less structured than that `over-structured'
novel Ulysses but there is more than enough evidence that it is in the
same league as Joyce's monster. For Vidal to insinuate that Pynchon
was slapdash and/or relied on obfuscation makes it look at best like
he skimmed the book and at worst that he is ignorant and foolish.

Kenneth concludes:

>      I don't think anyone on this list--certainly not those who 
>      participated in the GR GR, or those who will do so for M&D--could 
>      argue with any of the quoted statements save the comparison with 
>      Joyce.

Well, I managed to argue with all of them.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.