It's hard to believe Thomas Pynchon wrote a sentence as bad as this one

[Dave Monroe]

27.7.08
It's hard to believe Thomas Pynchon wrote a sentence as bad as this one.

"After she had given in to the notion of being doubled up on, she
found herself going out of the way looking for it, usually one in her
mouth, the other from behind, sometimes in her ass, so she got quickly
used to tasting her own fluids mixed with shit."

There's more before and after that, mentions of being chained to a bed
with leather hobbles and an instance of "you dirty fuckmouth whore"
but that sentence is representative of the section of "Against the
Day" in question. I've seen it referred to as the "Cowboy S+M"
section; it's just one page but it's so poorly written and oddly out
of place that I've been puzzling about it on and off since I read it.

The rest of the book is excellent. Hugh Kenner wrote a little piece
about Joyce beginning "Ulysses" in naturalism and ending it in parody
and in "Against the Day" Pynchon seems so far to take the opposite
tack, the entire book opening firmly in a parody of boy's adventure
magazine (Doc Savage-type stuff) but becoming more grounded in tone as
the demands of reality intrude on the characters. So there are the
Chums of Chance and their airship The Inconvenience in the
aforementioned whiz-bang mode, Lew Basnight beginning in a Kafkaesque
version of Chicago (complete with unspecified sins and surreal dive
hotels) and proceeding through the American West to England and a
version of Blavatsky and Yeats's mysticisms, Merle Rideout and his
daughter Dahlia in an off-kilter version of "Paper Moon" and so on,
all at the turn of the century, and alternately interacting and
working at cross-purposes.

The S+M scene is part of the Western revenge saga of the Traverse
family that takes up large parts of the book at a time and which
actually I frequently find the hardest sections to get through, though
I'm trying to reserve judgment until I actually finish the whole
thing. That particular scene makes sense as regards the motifs of the
book, the journeys of the characters involved, and setting up a
situation which will apparently be crucial to the Traverse storyline
but it's the execution of it that bugs me. Maybe Pynchon was parodying
cheap smut like Tijuana Bibles or Penthouse stories but that's a
stretch, it doesn't read as parody or homage in any way . . . I
respect Pynchon's writing ability, so it comes as even more a
surprise, especially in the middle of a work so well-written and
elsewise engaging.

My only other experience with Pynchon is the first 30 or so pages of
"Gravity's Rainbow" but I've read about him and some miscellanea of
his, letters, essays etc. and many of his pet interests and issues
show up in "Against the Day", some reviewers having called it a sort
of summation of his life's writing (guy is pretty old by now). Ideas
about capitalism, the use of anarchy as a way to oppose
industrialization and its effect on worker's rights, the acquisition
of technology for profitable or military means, the uses of theories
and hypotheses otherwise marginalized by the mainstream scientific
community and, very interesting to me, the sense of a fictive space
(that term is used in reference to the Chums of Chance, with Lew
Basnight it's the Invisible Area, and to the scientists it's the is
it/isn't it existence of a substance called Aether), a space where
these characters can exist indefinitely, only half-seen by the rest of
society, but a space constantly threatened by the encroachment of
actual "reality", usually represented by the needs of industrialists
like Scarsdale Vibe or the shadowy Organization that sends the Chums
on their missions. An early example is the first chapter, where the
1893 Chicago World's Fair is described as wrapped in fiction and
wonder, but the moment the Chums leave it, they're prey to regular
human emotions and pettiness, reflected by a shift in their dialogue
and the narrative voice.

Parallels can also be drawn to the current political climate, if
that's your thing. Blinded by their own arrogance and confidence in
their abilities, a scientific expedition brings a horrible power to a
large metropolis (never named, but clearly New York City), initiating
one cataclysmic night of flames where people flee giant clouds of
smoke that rush down the city streets, and clog transit systems in a
panic to escape. The city is afterward described as forgetting the
actual event, the nature and significance of the attack, only
remembering a vague injury to their superiority and paying their
respects to it by leaving the charred portion of the city intact,
establishing it as a memorial by erecting a gate with a quote from
Dante etched on the arch.

All in all, an excellent book so far and one I don't mind as my
introduction to Pynchon, but I'd still like answers about the cowboy
threesome.

http://phenoptosis.blogspot.com/2008/07/its-hard-to-believe-thomas-pynchon.html

"No symbols where none intended." --Samuel Beckett