Some thoughts on ATD

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Here it is, the real start of the election season with a big-ass hurricane 
headed straight for the jolly township previously known as "The Big Easy" 
just as the flyby boys convene for a general celebration of kleptocracy. 
I understand there are other distractions going on at this site as well. 

Nonetheless, here on the Pynchon List obsessive compulsive focus on 
the subject at hand is the order of the day and herewith is demanded!

[if you feel a need to be distracted, please try these Vineland-Styled 
Crackdowns, courtesy of Scarsdale Vibe's offspring:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/CRACKDOWN-BEGINS-Food-Not-by-Keith-McHenry-080901-646.html

http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/RNC2008_2.html

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message597346/pg1

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/amy-goodman-violently-arr_b_123062.html]

On the one hand, I'm exhausted with Pynchon, at least for the moment. 
This is not a new sensation. I felt like that after my first read-through of Gravity's 
Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. There's just too much stuff in these books
—too much revisionist history, redirection from the official myths to 
alternate personal histories, concepts that just don't fit into "the official 
story". It takes time to process all the 'new' data. Against the Day led me
to Hermetic Traditions—apparently the foundation of Western Magick. 
AtD also led me to actually read some postmodern writers of philosophy,
along with some help from Michael Bailey. My sense is that I want to
return to the book, but first there's some catching up to do with the real
world.

I had three readings of Against the Day within little under two years, 
a lot of time to spend on one very long, very confusing novel. Having a ride 
through Proust at the same time gave me an incredible angle of view for 
contemplating Pynchon's doorstopper. I can recommend the Lydia Davis 
translation of "Swann's Way" to all p-listers. The descriptive writing, the 
evocation of spirit-in-place and time is particularly inspired:

http://www.amazon.com/Swanns-Way-Search-Penguin-Classics/dp/0142437964

My reading of Against the Day is more like my reading of the Crying 
of Lot 49 and my reading of the Crying of Lot 49 is compulsive for a 
very simple reason—I was familiar with all the sites, radio stations, all
the locations in the novella when I first read my recycled copy in 1979.
Transbay Terminal would become a regular way-station in my daily
commute to work, just a few blocks from "Fun Terminal." Oedipa Maas
might only be a collection of demographics, a collection of signs about
character instead of actually being a character, but the web Oedipa's 
traveling on is as real as matzoh balls and dunkin' bagels [thanks, Slim.]
Carmel by the sea, Sproul plaza, big suburban homes in Novato, the
Paramount Ranch and the remnants of old Hollywood, the persistent
ringing of tightly formatted "Top 40 Radio" as it incubated in Southern 
California, circa 1963/1964. To many, Oedipa is something of a cipher, 
to me she's an aunt or a sister-in law, you see her time to time at family
gatherings. I guess I was sure enough of the place and time, it was all
so familiar, albeit not comforting in the least.

What's familiar [and rather strange, when you get right down to it] 
about Against the Day are the spiritual systems cited and demon-
strated, the Theosophists and Ceremonial Magicians and Shamans,
are all too much a reflection of a modern "new-age" bookstore right back
to its sources, like that "new-age" bookstore I'm working at. So many of 
the contents of the bookshelves of our store are reflected in AtD, that
Theosophical confluence of Buddhism, Christianity and the Western 
Occult all paraded in AtD. I realize that jumping to conclusions about 
what this means all this is not a good idea. It's clear that TRP knows 
Ceremonial Magick and the Kabbalah, but it's not as if Pynchon 
wants us all to share water in the Church of all Worlds, his agenda's
different, at least as far as I can tell. Still, an extraordinarily high 
percentage of characters, mostly "good guys", in AtD are involved in 
Heremticism, or Tarot, or Channeling or some admixture of occult 
contents.

When you arrive at that final auction In the Crying of Lot 49 you are left 
with many questions. Revelation is not quite at hand, not just yet. In a 
way, we are left on the cusp of revelation with a only pantheistic hymn
in Gravity's Rainbow. Who knows, maybe Tommy Boy played Barry 
McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" one too many times, maybe he knows 
too much about weapons delivery systems, maybe it's from playing too 
much Slim Galliard:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39d__HX7AR4

Or maybe he's received some major cosmic revelation from all of his 
incessant scrying of old books and old maths. Pynchon always has a penchant
for creating inviting environments for paranoid systems, and of course a 
lot of his writing consists of doper's travels through these realms. Not wasting
time on the literary promotion/book tour junket makes exegetical Pynchon
studies necessary, his absence, his failure to "explain" his works creates
a vacuum where all varieties of interpretation are happening and the density 
of points of reference within Pynchon's writing leads one to wonder of the 
methods and systems Pynchon is ultimately pointing towards, much like 
James Joyce. Some have called Against the Day Pynchon's parody of a 
Pynchon novel, with concepts from previous Pynchon novels paraded 
before us in caricature; an "Oedipal Scene" over postal misprints that
[when actually used as postal stamps] provide perfect anarchist 
commentary, the resurrection of a bit player from V. making a sweet, 
final, curtain call, O.I.C. Bodine popping up just as things are becoming 
irreparably fictional, the working personal of the White Visitation in their 
salad days, the creation of "Death From Above" and its ties to anarchy
in the USA, that fine, fine line between dedication and fury. There's lots
of lines of inquiry to Pynchon's previous writing in Against the Day, but
the overall tone is about as goofy as anything OBA's written. There is more
'contrary to fact' material in Against the Day than any of Pynchon's other
books and AtD has more to say about fiction and varieties of fiction than
anything else he's written. 

The Mirroring and dualism, I see that. But If I were to look for a single
metaphor that drives Against the Day, it would be the Quarternion—
Bilocated in or time as well as the time [fairly well doubling Proust's
lost or possibly wrecked times, 19893/1920ish. That mirroring and 
dualism is of this age and the ages presented in AtD, with the two
layers overlapping. It's the opportunities for deliberate and OTT
anachronism that drive much of Pynchon's historical fiction, the 
out-of-place bit of hipster jive that pops up everywhere in his books, the 
transformations of antique concepts into references to the present 
that function as punch lines to bad puns. AtD has a higher percentage
of these tics than any other novel of Pynchon's. And Quarternions, that
antique math on parade in Against the Day pretty much takes up
the same psychic space in AtD as Calculus does in Gravity's Rainbow.
At the same time, Quarternions are the backbone of all computer 
animation. This is a Quarternion in action. Watch and see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To_FmzOoJe8

I see the pattern of this sort of motion over time being a graphical 
representation of the interweaving of plot threads in AtD. I also
see a modern, high-tech and highly animated cartoon of the gilded 
age. I think that Thomas Pynchon's appreciation of the collected
work of Termite Terrace increases with each new novel, and this 
one is no exception.