Rating ATD

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

And now it's time for "Your Answers Questioned", with your host, Tom Bergeron.    

     For most of us on the list (I think), GR is Pynchon's masterpiece,
     setting the bar impossibly high for anything else he's written or 
     will ever write to surpass it.  But I know there are quite a few 
     people here who prefer other of his books (might Bekah, Robin, 
     and Mike Bailey be included?  Forgive me if I'm wrong).  I'd be 
     particularly interested in what those people have to say about 
     ATD -- how it stacks up against TRP's other books.

One of things that makes post-modern writing different from more
traditional forms of writing is the adoption of multiple voices and styles
within a writer's ouvre. [Welcome to pretentious lit-crit 101] There are 
multiple styles of story-telling within all of Pynchon's writing, often in the 
form of writings within the writing. "The Courier's Tragedy" is one ex-
ample, "Mason & Dixon" takes it a step further; the entire novel is a 
literary anachronism within the frame of rather more specific linguistic 
antiques, such as Boswell. "Against the Day" takes it even further;  
the absurdist story-telling frame of the "Chums of Chance Series" 
encourages pastiches of pastiches of Quaternionic convolution. 

Let me point out specific examples from other post-modern authors.
With Salman Rushdie we have a wide variety of styles—authorial 
voices, if you prefer—alternating from novel to novel. The seismic 
shift from "Satanic Verses" to "Haroun & the Sea of Stories" is roughly 
equivalent to Pynchon's from "Gravity's Rainbow" to "Vineland," a
novel Rushie obviously loves even more than I do.  "Haroun," is a 
masterpiece worthy of comparison to "Alice in Wonderland." It is
a wonderful story for smart children. In many ways "Vineland" is as
well, what with Prairie Wheeler as protagonist in search of her "real"
mother, what ever the hell "real" means when all your memories of 
her are coming to you via film, just like most of the rest of the bullshit 
you've been fed in throughout your life via the tube. Sorting signal
from noise seems to be a major theme in Pynchon.

Don DeLillo's "Underworld" and "White Noise" are similarly dissimilar.
Though the work of the same author, the shift in tone and mannerisms
of writing styles makes them as far from each other as "The Crying of 
Lot 49" is to "Gravity's Rainbow" and in very similar ways as well. 
"White Noise" is all about the white noise of a certain kind of academic 
anesthesia applied to language, rendering you numb while listening to 
tales of historic and current atrocities. "Underworld" is a giant machine
of a book, similar in inspiration and scale to Gravity's Rainbow. The
voices in "Underworld" are speaking with different timbres than the 
characters in "White Noise."

     For me, ATD's principle flaw was the lack of a single or at least 
     dual protagonist.  I think I understand why Pynchon made this 
     choice.  

I think Pynchon cooked up a set of parallel worlds that could in 
some way encompass all of his novels, an ark, if you will.

     A book that has the chaos of WWI, anarchy, modernity, 
     etc. at its core is too big for a single viewpoint.  

Anarchy is brought up in all of Pynchon's books, as well as quite a few 
very far left notions about power and history. I think "Paranoid Leftist" 
can be applied to Pynchon's writing a lot of the time. "Left of the left"
also comes to mind.

This is his PhD paper on the subject.

     On the other hand, there's a significant focus on duality, 
     which could have provided a context for a dual protagonist. 

On still yet another hand [this is turning into an Ernie Kovaks 
routine] there are many pairs and mirrorings within the novel.
The multiplicity of narrative styles [all those prototypes for all 
the propaganda narratives they sold to us later as "TV" show plots,
like "Maverick"] switch scene and character almost randomly, 
like an old Firesign Theater routine that re-contexualizes the
western with an American International "Trip" movie or "The
Raven" or a steampunk rendition of "Das Boot" and audibly 
changing channels that ultimately merge.The lack of a single 
dominant story line is more like anarchic consensus than 
hero-driven myth.

     Using the Chums of Chance as a kind of group protagonist 
     might be intellectually interesting, but it's emotionally flat. 

[Assuming the Bugs Bunny asana while noisily munching on a carrot]:

I think the emotion the dude is aiming for is humor. Against 
the Day ain't as dark as Gravity's Rainbow. I like that aspect, you 
don't and there you are, 19 hours later and you're right back where 
you started. [Bugs now flops a helmet from Die Walkure on his head
and walks into the opera house he's been leanin' up against.]

    The point of a protagonist is to give us an emotional, 
    visceral connection to the story.  

The point of ensemble playing is comedy.

     Slothrop isn't present in much of GR, but he still provides
     an emotional thread through the whole book.  

Ah. . . .    . . . .look, that whale's episodic and confusing in ways 
that don't always strike me as intentional. As for the disappearing
protagonist—so how you going to keep them down on the farm 
after they've seen Gay Paree? Geli Tripping's still my favorite
character in the book. Don't get me wrong, when it's great, it's 
great. Vineland's great too, just in different ways. Having a tight
plot is one of them.

     Oedipa's present throughout COL49, and we share her paranoia  
     throughout.  

She also shows signs of evolving compassion over time. Give her enough
room and she's closer to a real human being than characters in any other 
novel by Pynchon up until "Mason & Dixon." Which is one of many reasons 
I hold that book in as high esteem as any other by the author, in its own way.

But then came "Mason & Dixon," and folks that lived and breathed and 
really came off the page. It was a great moment of mental liberation for
Pynchon when Jeremiah and Charlie took over and wrote the book for
poor old Tom. 

     M&D and V (Stencil/Profane) have dual protagonists.  That they 
     interact weakly in V makes that book less emotionally satisfying . . .

Not to mention bursts of crappy writing and creepy attitudes. I really
think hierarchical listing of Pynchon's writing in some ways misses the 
point. But I'm willing to place "V." last anyway. It's juvenile and 
delinquent and I don't think I want a drink with the guy who wrote it.

If you like gazing into the Jet Scrying Ball of Pynchon's imagination,
at lurid, compelling, creeping entropy with a descent into the pit on 
the side, the first three novels are for you. If you'd like some nitrous  
oxide with your order, then it's the last three novels for you, baby. 

     (and TRP's books are emotional.  If they were just cerebral 
     exercises, I don't think we'd all be here obsessing over him). 

This reminds me of disagreements I had with my philosophy professor 
concerning Beethoven. I was nineteen, naturally I carried the insufferable 
attitude that listening to Beethoven made me superior in some 
inexplicable way. I said to my professor that it was the emotional impact that 
makes Beethoven's Fifth great, he said it's the structure. He was right, I was 
wrong. Saure Bummer's preference for Rossini also comes to mind. Plenty
of people into Pynchon find him interesting for reasons that really don't have 
much to do with emotion. If Pynchon ain't cerebral, then tell me—who is?

Now if you want to talk about poetry, that's another matter entirely.

     Zoyd seems to be the protagonist of Vineland (in that we meet 
     him first), but, unlike Slothrop or Oedipa, its not about his quest, 
     which weakens both his protagonist status and the book as a whole.

Prairie Wheeler is the victorious protagonist of Vineland, a hopeful
sign that our kids can think themselves out of this bullshit we seem
to be in, here in what used to considered the land of the free.

     The group read gave me a lot of new insights into ATD and made 
     me appreciate the book much more.  But it didn't alter my estimation 
     of how it ranks with TRP's other novels:

     1. GR
     2. V(the young Pynchon) tied with M&D (the mature Pynchon)
     3. COL49
     4. ATD
     5. Vineland

     Laura

Again, I say AtD's is as great as the Dude, it's Lebowski's Rug—it ties 
the whole room together. And I know that each time I read it, another 
quarter will drop into the slot, there will another illumination. And I'm
grateful for all of that. Against the Day, whatever others might think of
it, taught me more about Pynchon and more about the revisionist history 
and the po-mo concepts he plugs than any other novel by the dude.

Not to mention Magick.

But I'll bet that when the dust clears, Mason & Dixon will be  

"A number one top of the list, king of the hill. . . ."

Not that I really care mind you. I'm grateful for the lot of 'em.