Byzantine Grammatical Form

[Dave Monroe]

November 5th, 2008
Byzantine Grammatical Form


While the list of reasons that Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day could
be considered labyrinthian is long and tired, it is the subject of
grammar and of grammatical form that seems to be most notable, second
only to the novel's plot. Pynchon, without any interest in clarity,
chooses to run the reader's mind (and eyes) exhausted with many
cumulative sentences that talk on and on for lines. These stretches of
form do not serve the text in the raw, colloquial way of Hubert Selby
Jr., nor in the dogmatically sound prose of Cormac McCarthy; instead,
the clauses are joined too tightly by faulted commas that grip and
hold together passages that could (and should) flow quite remarkably
from the page.

In taking on the needless task of subtly emulating various styles of
popular writing, Pynchon drags along his meandering delivery of
description and exposition. And while this sort of homage could have
benefited the reader by granting some sense of nostalgia or education
in relation to the styles, Pynchon instead further dilutes his
intentions by making his Horatio Alger-styled narration sound very
much like his Jack London and so forth. Whether Pynchon should have
transgressed from his own conventions and created wholly unique forms
for each of his different literary modes is debatable. Likely though,
his choice of consistency is the most sound factor no however
disrupting to the prose styles it may be.

There are sections where the form lauds itself; Pynchon succeeds in
his brief, descriptive segments: "Track and trusswork went sagging
into the dust-choked arroyo."  And he fails in longer constructions:
"A troop of irregulars in red Zouave-style hats and trousers, their
mounts confused and terrified, wheeled helplessly, with who knew what
negligible increase of anxiety surely enough to start them shooting at
one another, not to mention at innocent civilians." Pynchon lets his
narration take a more vocal role by cutting the more oratorial
paragraphs into beds of fragment upon fragment: "As if looking out
through holes in a mask, the eyes moved and gleamed, shockingly alive
in flesh that might as well have been artificial. Seemed to be
whispering. Warning that there was some grave imbalance in the
structure of the world, which would have to be corrected."

Pynchon could have taken the second sentence and reworked its focus
and perhaps gained a more coherent flow: A troop of irregulars in red
Zouave-style hats and trousers wheeled helplessly with their mounts
confused and terrified. They wheeled with  who knew what negligible
increase of anxiety, surely enough to start them shooting at one
another or at innocent civilians. Conversely, Pynchon could have put
in place such odd sentences as a tool for emphasis. The actual
phrasing of the sentence above demands that the reader reread it by
the inclusion of the third clause and its dependent nature.

Though there is truly no absolute way to stylize the syntax of one's
English when looking to achieve indirect expression, it seems that
Pynchon's choices for Against the Day seem only to compliment the
writer's admonitory views on the postmodern novel. His
over-articulateness forms the many-threaded backbone of a novel both
awesome in scope and demand, and Pynchon's voice is resolute enough
that the reader can sense his tireless effort to tell the
metafictional tale.

http://www.notjasoncook.com/2008/11/05/byzantine-grammatical-form/