TWILIGHT OF THE IDOL(SMASHER)

[Christine Karatnytsky]

To my honest query, the embattled Keith responds cryptically:

>Chris asked what it was I liked about TRP's novels and it's 
>actually the same stuff he does so badly in M&D. V, CL49, and 
>GR--especially GR--were great magic acts, but since VINELAND, 
>TRP's  unfortunately shown his easily beguiled audience exactly how he 
>does his tricks.

Sorry, Keith, I know you've been taking some knocks, deserved or no.  I'm
not harping, but, like Derek Maus, I need a bit more than what you're
making available here if you intend to be understood.  To paraphrase: 
"what I like about Pynchon is what he did *better* in GR, V. and COL49"
(or "what I hate about Mason & Dixon is what I hated *less* in GR, V. and
COL49")  just doesn't answer the question.

Your first assumption--that the novels preceding Vineland were "great
magic acts"--seems faulty, given your impassioned preference for them. 
A-&:  "great magic acts?"  Wha?  These books are novelistic
sleights-of-hand?  Wankerish prestidigitations from a dilettante?  I'm
not sure if you intend to suggest that Pynchon is not a Real Writer
practicing his Craft, but this is how it appears.

Are you saying that Pynchon is an aberration as a novelist?  That the
early novels were flukes?  That he has shown his true mettle with what
he's churned out recently, those two Ghastly Flops, Vineland the Bad and
the dread cherry coke treacle, M&D?  Is it that, like Woody Allen's joke
in Annie Hall about the food served to two complaining Jewish grandmas,
these books are bad--"and such small portions!" In other words, is the
problem in trusting this novelist's creative effort that he simply
*hasn't created enough*?  (I wonder what your opinion is of Joyce wrt
Finnegan's Wake, and what you might have to say by way of comparing these
two relatively low-output writers?  I am ignorant of Gaddis and cannot
respond to your comments about him.)      

Or:  Has the encyclopedic journey, the politics, the deeply embedded
texts, the hard gorgeous poetry, the pure SPEED of the earlier books got
you aching...for more sssspeed?  I know what you mean, man, but lissen: 
this is Sal Paradise here telling you to switch gears, Dean, switch
gears, or you'll miss it.  Settle down.  Repeat after me:  Snowballs have
flown their arcs.

We haven't crashed, or been bombed.  We've landed.  And the first
sentence of Mason & Dixon--alright, that charm, that spell, that
incantation--is the clue to you from that wascally wabbit Mr. Thomas
Pynchon that the times they are a-changin'.  The book rocket lands.  The
language is an idiosyncratic mock-18th Century idiom, the text is more
subtle, less densely embedded, the mood is elegiac.  Now everybody goes
"Ahhhhhhh!"    

Say it again:  Snowballs have flown their arcs.

He uses the Word, lovey, the Secret Word of the Sacred Order of Pynchon,
in the first sentence of the book to bring your Holy Center shaking to
its knees, to tell you that this book will be different from the one(s)
that came before.  He knew you'd be looking, through the, yes, gnarly
prose of that first volley, with a magnifying glass big enough to make
the Transit of Venus pop.  Why do you think he released the sentence for
the pre-pub press blah blah?  It was, among other things, a coded
preemptive strike.  What's he saying?   He's saying that he's writing a
different kind of book.  If you hadn't gotten the message with Vineland,
get it now:  the party's over.  There's only one Gravity's Rainbow (one
V., one COL49) and it's been written.  "I'm just an old hand from Kansas
myself," sez the Wiz.

Your second assumption--that any book by Thomas Pynchon is one by which
anyone would be "*easily* beguiled"  (emphasis mine)--is so hard to
believe as to be ridiculous.  We've all been reading and talking about
some highly complex literature that challenges its readers and transcends
its form.  You underestimate much.

Pay some attention to that man behind the curtain!  His awesome
intellect--informed by his previous work, by age, by marriage, by raising
a child--is very much in tact.  You'll find he still has relevant things
to say, and the emotional depth to make it resonate.  (Isn't one of the
standard criticisms of GR that its characters are somewhat
one-dimensional in terms of depth?  I don't think this is a criticism one
might make about M&D with any great success.)  Yes, he takes 800 pages to
say It (and I take many more, and poorer, words than Andrew Dinn, who
first discussed this business about the opening sentences some months
ago.  Maybe check the archive.), but it's a great ride.

Chris