GOD MODE--potential spoilers--Greg Egan--Walter Kirn

[Keith Brecher]

It seems that TRP punched GOD MODE into his puncutron for M&D, though 
G-d knows Walter Kirn--if he cannot be forgiven for reviewing M&D without
having finished it, maybe can be tithed a bit for honesty--made some
ripping good points in his SLATE review. I've been wondering about those
other reviewers who commented that the humor in M&D is hilarious because,
like Kirn, I personally developed a tight sickly grin during some of the
goofy parts in M&D. The George Washington and Gershom (Scholem) scene comes
to mind. And that runaway four ton cheese is probably absolutely fucking
hilarious...if you're stoned or have bilateral defects in Brodmann areas 9
and 12 of your prefrontal cortex causing distortion of your sense of humor. 
   The reviews in general, however, seem pretty much in sync with what I
thought about M&D (TC Boyle, Anthony Lane, and that damned Voice critic hit
all the main points): TRP's most moving novel; a more restrained, mature
work than GR; proves that VINELAND was an aberration...blah blah blah. I
thought the dammed Voice reviewer really got it right when she said that
M&D is the work of a weary, old man, though not for the same reasons. On
first reading, I had the sense that Ruggles was playing a sort of greatest
hits, golden oldies, walk down memory lane kind of thing like Mucho Maas'
re-appearance in VINELAND as Count Drugula. Ancestors to beloved characters
like Pig Bodine and Ronald Cherrycoke, another lame integral joke, drugs,
talking animals, Vineland the Good, farinaceously, grotesque medical
exhibits, drugs, lots of aarrgh's, parabolas, v's, groovy mysticism,
mysterious symbols, drugs, Anubis-style decadence, Mutt-and-Mutter-type
buddies, the usual poems and songs. And lots more I can't think of right
now, but the upshot was that occasionally I thought M&D could be matched
point to point like one of TRP's map metaphors with precedents in his other
fiction. Hey, the map is the territory, right?
   Though, I guess TRP's broken new ground here with a linear (westerly?)
narrative and all that Sot Weed-style Jargon. M&D may be the tome the Nobel
Prize committee have been waiting for demonstrating that Ruggles has indeed
atoned for the coprophagia in GR. Except for those ripped bodices, M&D's
pretty tame and Very Literary indeed. If Crumb's gonna animate GR, Disney
should do M&D. It'd be a great follow-up to POCOHANTAS. Not to mention
great fodder for Disney's America.
[RED ALERT: THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A RANT. SKIP AHEAD TO THE NEXT
PARAGRAPH FOR MORE CIVIL DISCOURSE AND/OR IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ ME
EMBARRASS MYSELF]
   To get back to Kirn though. I never thought I'd forgive him for his
savage, vengeful, and mean-spirited review of GIOVANNI'S GIFT, another of
the past year's great novels, but his comments about the parasitic
academics who have made a career out of TRP were RIGHT ON. I made the same
point awhile ago on this very list, but everybody ignored me at that time,
but I guess now I've been vindicated...by WALTER KIRN of all people. I
guess I'll have to read his fiction now. But, not to be misunderstood, I
have nothing against academics making a living off another person's toil,
in this case TRP's, so long as they acknowledge their ulterior motives and
don't publish total shit like WRITING/PYNCHON and THE GNOSTIC PYNCHON,
among many many others, including lots of PYNCHON NOTES, and create some
bogus critical language meant simultaneously to wow and exclude the
uninitiated so that the poor cold pret'rite masses think to themselves,
"Man, some heavy stuff is going on up there in the Ivory Tower...like
sorcery or physics or something."  That Damn'd Voice reviewer mentioned the
probably true story of some irritating person who counted every word in GR
in order to illustrate her point that everybody on this list is a
ridiculous fruitcake and indulge in all sorts of heinous mental
masturbation and willful misreading and other insane whatnots worthy of
reasonable liberal people's pity, but look no further than PYNCHON NOTES
for the very thing she's talking about.
   The one point about which Kirn and the hordes of reflex reviewers who
gave M&D an automatic rave seem to agree upon is that the TRP fanaticks on
the Internet are a really awful, pathetic bunch of people, just below Art
Bell and Jim Garrison devotees on the John Waters crackpot meter. Does that
mean They're right and that the title for BREAKING THE WAVES doesn't come
from GR? I was taught, by those evil Jesuitical academicians, that TRP had
managed to fit the entire world into his fiction, like that famous Remedio
Varos (sic?) painting in reverse. 
   Incidentally, I've noticed William Gaddis' name bandied about (another
good Long Island boy), and I wonder if other people maybe saw some
RECOGNITIONS influence in M&D? The running jokes in M&D reminded me of that
joke about Carruthers and his horse. Such an allusion  doesn't seem
completely out of the question, since Patrick O'Brien and Miss Saigon got a
nod. Additionally, it seems impossible that TRP was not aware of William T.
Vollmann's monumental SEVEN DREAMS project, the biggest dream of which so
far--FATHERS AND CROWS--did not get the reverential treatment accorded M&D
(and probably should have).
   Another influence on M&D, who didn't get a direct nod, seems to be Steve
Erickson, whose last novel AMNESIASCOPE wasn't so good, but whose earlier
stuff earned a coveted Pynchon blurb, generally reserved for the likes of
suspicious Sam Peckinpah wastrels like Rudolph Wurlitzer. The inhabitation
of the lost eleven days and some of the magical realist stuff, particularly
the bridge dream, seems to have been borrowed from Erickson's first three
novels. I say that fully aware that Erickson probably got that shit from
TRP and Marquez and Fuentes and Borges and Barthelme and Calvino in the
first place, but the point seems worth making since the so-called
fabulist/magic realist elements of TRP's fiction have been very much in
evidence lately.
   Anyway, I'm hard at work trying to shoehorn some Greg Egan influence
into M&D, so far without success. However, I'm only into chapter four of
DISTRESS, finally available Stateside, so who knows? Maybe I'll find it the
way Walter Kirn maybe finally got to the other side of M&D and said, "Now,
that was a great fucking novel."

Walter Kirn for Ruler of the World,
Keith