Rating ATD

[K3 V iN Cummiskey]

Robin you can skip Reveille and sleep in, in the AM.


--- On Tue, 9/9/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Rating ATD
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 12:33 AM
> 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.