Back to the Future

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

              . . . .Plot is the most irrelevant portion of a Pynchon 
             novel, as character sometimes seems superfluous 
             in James, whose great character is the prose itself 
             (Aristotle no doubt said that, with access to one of 
             Pynchon’s time machines). As it includes as many 
             unidentifiable and miscellaneous ingredients as a 
             fruitcake, however, the telling is itself the form of 
             genius. Even an admiring reader might admit that 
             Pynchon has an aversion to design or just doesn’t 
             show much talent for it. He trusts that, if he marshals 
             a battalion of characters and hurls a cannonade of 
             ideas at them (improvising madly all the while), when 
             the smoke clears some kind of incoherent coherence 
             will result. This worked fairly well in V. and Gravity’s 
             Rainbow, fairly ill in Mason & Dixon (the most dazzlingly 
             written of the novels), and not at all in Vineland. Even 
             to begin to compass the historical mechanisms of Against 
             the Day, a reader would have to go beyond anarchism 
             to the turn-of-the-century battle between the Vectorists 
             and the Quarternionists, played out in universities 
             across North America and Europe; to the aftermath of 
             the “War of Currents” between Tesla and Edison, 
             Tesla’s AC power illuminating the Columbian Exposition; 
             to theories about the aether (Pynchon is largely a bore 
             about aether); to the Tunguska incident in Siberia (which 
             conspiracy theorists blame on Tesla instead of a meteor); 
             and to various sideshows in the Great Game (V. was 
             Pynchon’s earlier novel on the subject), including some 
             vicious skirmishes in the Balkans. Pynchon is not a 
             polymath but an omnivore, so far as arcane learning is 
             concerned.

             . . . .Even an admiring reader might admit that 
             Pynchon has an aversion to design or just doesn’t 
             show much talent for it. . . .

Genius is more like it. Everything mentioned in that long snippet 
connects to the central subject matter/source material of the novel, 
Pynchon & Company. Our Beloved Author is, after all, very fond of 
allusions & word games, distorted and sometimes out-of-sync riffs 
on readily identifiable source material. Try this word game/puzzle: 
Waste Doctrine, Pynchon v. Stearns [hey Stecil!, I got yer 'V.' right 
here!], T.S. Elliot's mother, "I felt I had to put on a whole extra 
overlay of rain images and references to "The Waste Land" and A 
Farewell to Arms. I was operating on the motto 'Make it literary," 
a piece of bad advice I made up all by myself and then took.,"  
W.A.S.T.E. stamps, the mines & the railways, and wasted land,
well that sure is one fine Gordian knot of self-reference, ain't it?
Don't have to entirely make sense, mind you, but do seem to drink
from the same wells, if you catch my drift. [1] Don't have to be no
linear history, but you can make one fine family tree out of the 
mess of them, what with various Traversi here, a scoop of Maas 
here, some Bloody Chiclitz over there, here, there, everywhere 
a Bodine. . . .

. . . .pretty soon your wall will look kinda like Tyrone's map, all covered 
with multi-colored stars and whatnot, a family tree that becomes enormous. . . .

            "The ship by now has grown as large as a small city.."

And then there's all those mirrors. . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_p66HjTweo

I've only just arrived here, plenty mo' exegesis in store, but let's look at 
some of what Prof. Logan points to as rambling, disconnected, a magpies 
nest's worth of subjects:

             . . . .the turn-of-the-century battle between the Vectorists 
             and the Quarternionists, played out in universities 
             across North America and Europe; to the aftermath of 
             the “War of Currents” between Tesla and Edison, 
             Tesla’s AC power illuminating the Columbian Exposition; 
             to theories about the aether (Pynchon is largely a bore 
             about aether); to the Tunguska incident in Siberia (which 
             conspiracy theorists blame on Tesla instead of a meteor); 
             and to various sideshows in the Great Game (V. was 
             Pynchon’s earlier novel on the subject), including some 
             vicious skirmishes in the Balkans. . . .

The 'Q'/'V' thread relates to all sorts of patent application issues, what 
with one language being supplanted by another. I'm sure there were plenty 
of Pynchon & Company legal documents dealing with shifting languages 
like these. That 'war of currents' connects with the Pynchon & Company 
dedication to Edison. Aether & Quarternions and Chemical Explosions 
also bring us to that earlier Thomas Ruggles Pynchon at Trinity, and the 
fallout from the 'Great Game' has more than a little to do with those 
books that Professor Logan chooses to dismiss on one level or another.
". . . .Pynchon is all too enamored of spies. . . ." I'll bet that Raymond 
Pynchon & Co. was inordinately fond of the services of the Pinkertons,
unwittingly helping to foster the ever growing 'intelligence' community in 
our land of the 'free'. ". . . .vast stretches of Against the Day point toward 
something but finally have nowhere to get to. . . ." Let's see here, we start
with a lighter-than-aircraft [like all that German Technology that Pynchco. 
helped bankroll][@] starting up towards Chicago just before Raymond Pynchon 
& Company rolls into town, and end up flying towards Grace, just like 
William Pynchon was writing about all those books ago. Said book being 
the first to be burned in 'the land of the free'.

Sounds like a family affair to me.

             Finis

             The mulligan stew of Against the Day includes a boys’ 
             dirigible novel, a spy novel (Pynchon is all too 
             enamored of spies), a mathematician’s novel (half a 
             sentence about the Zermelo axioms may send the 
             reader straight to sleep), a western anarchist novel, 
             a European anarchist novel, a search-for-Shambhala 
             novel, and probably four or five novels the reader 
             would rather forget. Pynchon makes a halfhearted 
             attempt to tie up a few loose ends; yet vast stretches 
             of Against the Day point toward something but finally 
             have nowhere to get to. The true Pynchon fanatic 
             would never be worried by this—as people say about 
             their lives these days, it’s all about the journey. This 
             gives Pynchon a license for picaresque most authors 
             would kill for—his vices have been transmuted into 
             virtues, a better bargain than that offered by the 
             philosopher’s stone.

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/summer/logan-pynchon-against-the-day/

It's been a year since my first high-speed scramble through this 
mystifying text. After my second, somewhat less hectic pass-through, 
we collectively plunged into a rather variable group read, alternating 
from moments of high exhilaration [like right now, what with Paul 
Nightingale's meaningful re-considerations of Modernism], to nihilistic 
nadirs of despair [2]  [like me scrambling for the next post as the 
Stupendica has an argument with itself as regards just where it 
thinks it's going today, and I meditate on where the hell Ostend is 
and why the hell I should care.]

Thing is, I'm reading lots of other stuff right now, looking at the time 
frame of 'Against the Day'. The book I picked up on the early 
development of sound in the Movies: 'The Talkies: American 
Cinema's Transition To Sound 1926-1931, Donald Crafton 
[ISBN 0-520-22128-1], turns out to have some of the most 
interesting stuff, trotting out the internecine conflicts of the major
film studios, the fiscal fallout in the war for sound and a number of 
other themes that have a great deal to do with the scientific 
developments and corporate support of R & D that makes up a fair 
share of all of Pynchon's novels. Next time I go to Berkeley, I'll look 
for the other volumes in the series that relate to the era of AtD. 

Did you know that "The Shadow" first appeared on the radio in 1930?
1931 is the critical year for 'Pynchon & Co., the year they went down.

          It took her till the middle of Huntley and Brinkley to remember 
          that last year at three or so one morning there had come this 
          long-distance call, from where she would never know (unless 
          now he'd left a diary) by a voice beginning in heavy Slavic 
          tones as second secretary at the Transyl-vanian Consulate, 
          looking for an escaped bat; modulated to comic-Negro, then 
          on into hostile Pachuco dialect, full of chingas and maricones; 
          then a Gestapo officer asking her in shrieks did she have 
          relatives in Germany and finally his Lamont Cranston voice, 
          the one he'd talked in all the way down to Mazatlan. "Pierce, 
          please," she'd managed to get in, "I thought we had" 

          "But Margo," earnestly, "I've just come from Commissioner 
          Weston, and that old man in the fun house was murdered by 
          the same blowgun that killed Professor Quackenbush," or something. 

          "For God's sake," she said. Mucho had rolled over and was looking 
          at her. 

          "Why don't you hang up on him," Mucho suggested, sensibly. 

          "I heard that," Pierce said. "I think it's time Wendell Maas had a 
          little visit from The Shadow." Silence, positive and thorough, fell. 
          So it was the last of his voices she ever heard. 

          Lamont Cranston.

I realize that speaking of the known events of Thomas Pynchon's life 
constitutes Heresy in the realm of Critical Discussion of the author's 
writings. [3] However, a brief glimpse into the little bits of Bio that leak 
in---lots of Library research, big on newspapers, a big steamin' 
heap of Family history to sort out, greater emphasis on Family History 
as the author's career progresses---it looks like family history is the 
key to understanding the book. Of all the threads I followed, this is
the red string that connects all the novels. The size and scope and
time of day and location and names dropped and the ultra-hot mauve 
headgear [*] in Against the Day all point me in the general direction 
of Pynchon & Company.

If, when discussion of this novel was first unleashed on the world, there
was general knowledge that Pynchon & Company had their hands in
all of these threads---lighter than air travel, scientific textbooks 
from a generation previous, laws on property and property rights, 
investments in mines and railroads, investments in electrical power and
gas-works, monies directly invested in Edison & Tesla---if we knew in
November of 2006 that the Pynchons were a big family with a big
investment house that made a big fall in the wake of putting a little too 
much faith [and other people's credit] in talkies---if we knew that before 
we started the book, do you think the reviews might have come out 
different?

After re-reading this long, long essay on the novel [3ed rereading 
since it first appeared] it strikes me that 'Back to the Future: On Thomas 
Pynchon's Against the Day' by William Logan probably would have 
turned out quite different if Mr. Logan was cognizant of the Pynchon 
Family legacy, their disinheritance, their long shadow.

0. The larger pun within is, of course that Pynchon & Company is both 
a Family and a Corporation. That, in fact, just might be the instigator for 
the novel's central metaphor, bi-location.

1. Those of you that didn't nod out on the western passages of AtD 
will want to see 'No Country For Old Men', if only for the dialog. 

2: Pure Spiro, and I apologize. But there it was! Just lying there. . . .
. . . .couldn't just '86' the poor thing.

3. As the heresy of making heaven more accessible is the heresy 
of William Pynchon, I'm proud to be a heretic. And there's a whole 
lot of pointing towards that general direction in Against the Day, 
particularly towards the book's end.

@.  http://www.aerofiles.com/pynchon.jpg

*. I still see little pointers to Proust, a similarity of family history 
and [in their own differing ways] their isolation and extraordinary 
sensitivity.