New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 23, 2009, at 2:36 AM, Mark Abell wrote:

There was a spectacularly nasty review of Mason & Dixon by Walter Kirn  
in Slate that applies here:

	. . . At bottom, Pynchon writes mystery novels--symphonic,
	polymathic detective stories that resolve themselves not in
	simple sums but in hip new intellectual logarithms. And he pays
	his readers the ultimate compliment of writing as though he
	knows they're capable of getting his erudite cosmic jokes.

	That's the rub, and that's why I'm not a fan: Pynchon is a writer
	you have to "get," and I find no activity less inspiring than
	Rubik's Cube-ing through a clue-strewn supertext in search of a
	paradoxical Eureka! . . .

	http://www.slate.com/id/2980/

I'm a fan, I enjoy the meander and wobble of Pynchon's super-sized  
sentences and paragraphs and the example you cited is just hunky dory  
as far as I'm concerned, but being as I'm one of those fans and you're  
new to this, and your citation is one of those Rubik's Cubes that Mr.  
Kirn goes out of his way to deplore,  I suspect the following will help:

> "Manoeuvring in vessels camouflaged in naval-style "dazzle  
> painting," whereby areas of the structure could actually disappear  
> and reappear in clouds of chromatic twinkling,

In the previous book, Vineland, a car was painted with a similarly  
"magical" paint job, rendering it invisible to radar and other tools  
of the law enforcement trade.

> scientist-skyfarers industriously gathered  their data, all of  
> deepest interest to the enterprisers convened leagues below, at  
> intelligence centers on the surface such as the Inter-Group  
> Laboratory for Opticomagnetic Observation (I.G.L.O.O.), a  
> radiational clearing-house in Northern Alaska,

There is an ongoing "Ray-Race" in Against the Day, where corporations  
have scientists check out previously unknown and un-exploited spectra  
of electromagnetic energy for commercial uses. Radio is just around  
the corner and film is already under way. After that—TV, Computers,  
the Internets, smart phones and the end of intelligent life as we know  
it.

> which these days was looking more like some Lloyd's of the high  
> spectrum, with everyone waiting anxiously for the next fateful  
> Lutine announcement."

Lutine happens to be one of those words that Pynchon like to use  
because the potential definitions point in a number of different  
directions—a frigate, a ship's bell, a female imp and a chemical that  
enhances eyesight. But I do believe Pynchon is pointing to what can be  
seen while simultaneously preserving echos of adventure on the high  
seas.