a look at the James Wood AtD review - part 2 (couple spoilers)

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thanks for your thoughtful dissection of the Woods review (which I haven't actually read yet).  I think what you say in point "n" is the real gist of his review:  nothing in the book particularly grabbed him.  I think we all have our favorite sections in TRP's books.  For me, they came fast and furious in GR (and V, COL49 and M&D) but were much sparser in VL and ATD.  So I can sympathize with reviewers who are less than enthralled with ATD.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net
>Sent: Jul 9, 2007 1:44 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: a look at the James Wood AtD review - part 2 (couple spoilers)
>
>...didn't know the review was up at Powell's.  Cool.
>Still, the New Republic may prove interesting...
>
>this caveat probably isn't needed, but my comments 
>tend to the lightweight and irreverent
>
>Section 1 - in which Richardson/Fielding is proposed as 
>a duality, and Pynchon is placed in the Fielding camp.
>
>One of the comments beneath the NR review advises that
>Ian Watt originated this duality, and expresses surprise
>that Wood doesn't credit him...I'd probably go with Wood
>in that those who'd care already know...
>
>but it's an interesting distinction and reminds me
>of another famous one, involving even earlier
>writers but noting a similar difference: Dante/Shakespeare
>involving depth vs breadth, introspection vs action,
>internal vs external, character vs plot, 
>pure reading pleasure vs stage-friendliness
>(though this last one bumps against the consensus
>that GR is unfilmable...) -- and I'll follow Wood
>by not crediting that one (tho' it's because I can't remember)
>
>Wood prefers the Richardson tradition.
>
>He notes of the Fielding tradition "no one can 
>really be in danger. Thus the rapid, farce-like, 
>overlit simplicity of the happenings in Fielding"
>
>-- ignoring the interiority of Webb's death in 
>the narrative, to cite one obvious example, 
>or the stark description of the bombed cafe.
>Now the train Frank blows up.  That isn't 
>slapstick, it isn't revocable, it's muted because
>we aren't on the train..it's more like a CNN report...
>and suggests that the distance Frank (and by extension,
>all of us news-viewers) immediately
>achieves is tragic (though, true, this isn't dwelt on,
>unless by the reader) -- o-or, the flat affect
>after having shot Sloat...the thing I identify 
>with here is that his emotions _are_ damped down,
>that this action is imposed on him, separate from
>the really interesting parts of his life...
>
>One of my English professors said _Clarissa_ had 
>affected her deeply, to the point of tears streaming
>- apparently she could identify. Clarissa was recognizable 
>and affecting to her.  I have never found time to finish
>reading it, though it's on my list based on her statement
>(I've bogged down in the unrelieved sadness, and, admittedly,
>because of failure to identify)
>
>I'm tempted to give up on trying to prove 
>AtD worthy on Wood's terms.  
>_AtD_ is everything _Clarissa_ isn't: it has travel, 
>the spotlight moves around (and the doubling
>motif suggests that we all have much in common, so
>that insights from one character may apply to others), 
>it has science, history, humor...
>though, heck, the suffering maiden gets a fair share 
>of attention too (that Lake is in durance vile, come on) 
>- and the prose varies around different characters
>and parts in a way that speaks as usefully as 
>quotes and direct description (trying to prove 
>that is beyond my scope here)
>
>But I still feel like looking at a few more points in
>the Wood essay, gently differing as with a friend.
>
>a) "Pynchon's works are prodigies: they do everything 
>but move us."  Ouch, if true.  Because what else is there?
>Richardson moved my English prof to tears, but
>(Fielding-ish) Dickens also moved tycoons and 
>legislators to tears...
>Pynchon moves people to learn, and to laugh, and 
>maybe, just maybe, to think.
>
>b) "His characters sit down and lengthily, 
>larkily "dispute" ideas with each other 
>as if sitting in roadside taverns and sharing 
>pipes and pots of ale."
>
>-- and often, not just "as if", 
>but while literally doing these
>things.  At various times, people find it
>satisfying to do just that...and Pynchon is there!
>(did I mention, I tend to lightweight commentary)
>
>b) "Pynchon makes use of the British espionage novel 
>of international intrigue (John Buchan, Eric Ambler), 
>the Victorian and Edwardian adventure novel 
>(H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne), Western dime-store 
>novels (Louis L'Amour), English comic farce (Wodehouse), 
>and many others I am not badly read enough to recognize."
>
>Toldja he was a believer in the canon...
>but at one point, anyway, Pynchon did say he was
>writing for the ages...so that's a fair cop
>
>c)  "The novel swoons in the false gas of the inauthentic; 
>it delights in the copied, the second-hand, the centerless 
>imitation, the flawless fraudulent surface. Like the rest 
>of Pynchon's work, this novel accumulates meaning 
>only to disperse it."
>
>Is this a non-sequitur, or did I miss a connection?
>
>d) "Webb has an almost mystical devotion to dynamite, 
>and an unbudgeable paranoia. "There is a master list 
>in Washington, D.C.," he announces one day, "of 
>everybody they think is up to no good, maintained 
>by the U.S. Secret Service." 
>
>but they did, and so did the Pinkertons!
>not that there's anything wrong with that...
>
>e) "Reef Traverse travels through the West, 
>determined to avenge the death by killing 
>the killers."
>
>not for long...
>
>f) "He also assumes his father's mantle, 
>continuing the mystical anarchism 
>of detonation. "Each explosion was like the text 
>of another sermon, preached in the voice of the thunder...."
>
>the only time they were like sermons
>were on the way back with Webb's body,
>blasts without a target during those days,
>I thought - after he settles in and bombs
>things in earnest, they're pushed from the
>foreground and not much characterized...
>as, also, like in Webb's career 
>we only witness 1 blast
>as far as I can remember
>(that's a fan's nitpick, but it did stir me
>to trying a chronology that would involve
>that particular blast as being the one from
>which Vibe's investigators followed the trail 
>to Webb, which would mean that Kit was recruited
>before Vibe knew the full extent of Webb's enmity)
>
>g) "Kit Traverse, who has one of the largest roles 
>in the book, accepts compensatory payment from 
>Scarsdale Vibe"
>
>chronology (Kit recruited in 1899, Veikko's
>postcard dated 1900) suggests payment couldn't
>have been compensation
>at that point, and in fact support dwindles
>after Webb's death
>...again, a fan's nitpicking.  I would hate
>to have to summarize _Clarissa_: this lord
>guy has these myrmidons, and he keeps
>calling her a sauce-pot, it went on, and on,
>and I kept wishing she would hit him with a 
>frying pan like Lake did Deuce...
>
>h) Mark's letter dealt with the possibilities
>for meaning in the Archduke's visit to Chicago.
>
>i) "And I quite liked the mayonnaise joke, 
>though it has the feeling of a gag prepared 
>in advance, before the actual narrative cooking 
>has been done"
>
>what with the way Charles Hollander explained
>the "for de Mille" pun in GR, and what with
>the "Marquis de Sod" joke in Vineland, 
>there may even be a reason for that.
>In GR, an admiration for the more tolerant 
>mores of France?  In Vineland, a juxtaposition
>of the hymn to popular freedom (freedom
>from having a king?  disbelief in the divine right
>thereof?  a virile disrespect for undue authority?
>a demand for "the consent of the governed"?)
>with the symbol of violent aristocratic privilege
>- all tied up with the idea of an actor gaining
>percentage points in a landscaping business,
>ie the ascendancy of advertising and service
>industries, and, obliquely, Reagan's presidency?
>And now, Reef backing away from the Marseillaise
>right after it calls the citizens to arms?
>Beatles, 1969 - "better free your mind instead"
>
>j) "Here Reef, on the trail of Fresno and Kindred, 
>reflects that the stooges are even worse than the plutocrats: 
>
>    If Capital's own books showed a balance 
>in clear favor of damnation, if these plutes 
>were undeniably evil hombres, then how much more so 
>were those who took care of their problems for them, 
>in no matter what ignorance of why, not all of their 
>faces on the wanted bills, in that darkly textured style 
>that was more about the kind of remembering, 
>the unholy longing going on out here, 
>than of any real-life badman likeness...  
>
>Again, the musical control is flawless, and the 
>long sentence, slowly read, is perfectly comprehensible. 
>...The ellipsis in the above quotation is Pynchon's, 
>and marks a section break; and in a way, the ellipsis 
>is the only place this long sentence has to go--into 
>the empty terminus of broken meaning."
>
>(but I sez)
>This is Reef's thinking.  It doesn't seem perfectly
>comprehensible to me, nor a statement of Pynchon's
>- I don't think Pynchon qua Pynchon would fail to return 
>to the topic or quail before extending past 7 clauses
>- except insofar as he is "thinking as Reef."
>Reef is as uncomfortable with taking up arms as Kit, 
>so instead of continuing his screed against the 
>hired men - though it's a valid point, a villain
>without myrmidons is impotent -
>he branches onto the topic of wanted posters,
>and "unholy longing" which I link (maybe unwarrantedly)
>with the longing Vibe feels for Kit, the longing
>Foley Walker observed in the gay club, the longing
>- however repressed - between Deuce and Sloat...
>and the longing of Reef's grief (hey, that rhymes)
>
>
>k) "It is fair to say, I think, that the 
>intimations of positive connectedness are 
>reserved for the most rhapsodic prose"
>
>vice versa, I would say.  What can he mean
>by this inversion?
>
>l) "One wonders how many of his "fans" might 
>dwindle away were his genial, nicely hippie-ish 
>view of anarchists closer to the gloomy conservatism 
>of Joseph Conrad."
>
>yeah, that Vineland was a real glimpse of the
>utopian success of the anarchists (?)
>and Webb getting beat to death after abusing
>his family and expressing his willingness to
>kill people who aren't primary targets - laugh riot...
>but even Lew's witnessing the anarchist meeting 
>in Chicago shows, and I think inspires, a
>development of human sympathy - not a total embracing
>of goals and certainly not of methods...
>
>m) the bit about lists and how all the places
>are the same...
> he seems unwilling to relish the items in the lists.
>They aren't the same, obviously.  Some people enjoy them;
>I've spent some time with the mess on Slothrop's desk
>and considered it a golden hour, for instance.
>Someday I may even find the patience to discern interesting
>differences in Clarissa's letters.  
>
>n) "What all this means, in practice, 
>is that Against the Day is a massive novel 
>that never feels spacious, because it so rarely 
>slows down to describe anything properly, never 
>indulges in that rallentando of respect whereby 
>each note is awarded its imperishable thisness. 
>Instead, the descriptive keyboard is manically 
>swiped, up and down, up and down, from top to bottom, 
>as if some genius child were proving to us that 
>yes, he can play the piano."
>
>The praxis of reading that works best for me
>is to wait until something grabs me, then
>reread that point and broaden out around it
>to see how it ties together to the other places
>that affect me.  I don't think I
>made that up, and I think good writers write 
>to that intentionally.
>It's possible nothing in the book grabbed him
>that way...
>Is it possible that because of the idea that
>Pynchon is a dangerous radical, Wood felt
>threatened and didn't let anything grab him that way?
>
>curly d) "But there again, the fact remains that the 
>New Orleans of Against the Day, the New Orleans set down 
>on the page, is a city of grinning Negroes and gumbo. 
>Either it is offensive if he means it, or it is slightly 
>differently offensive if he doesn't mean it, because 
>he has still committed it to paper."
>
>New Orleans as seen through Reef's eyes -
>I'll bet that Clarissa'd reach for
>smelling salts if she had to go to New Orleans,
>and be happy that lord guy brought his myrmidons.
>
>theta) "Naturally, a search for truth implies a wariness 
>about the definition of truth. But it is hard not to feel 
>that Pynchon is postmodernistically consumed by the 
>latter, while he merely snacks at the former."
>
>Perhaps if a counterexample were given...
>
>point the last) "Well, then, you might read the great novels 
>that are set in the same era as Against the Day: these 
>include The Man Without Qualities, Remembrance of Things 
>Past, The Radetzky March, The Secret Agent, Confessions of 
>Zeno (which ends with a prophesy of something very 
>like atomic destruction), The Magic Mountain (which 
>ends with the Great War), The Good Soldier Svejk. 
>Many of these are quite funny--but not farcical--novels, 
>above all profoundly involved with the exploding of truths, then finally devoted to the search for truth."
>
>...instead of a list...
>
>
>