New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day

[Mark Kohut]

Dear New Reader,

Welcome! Please stay. Ask anything. I can only add this to what Robin sez:
P is LIKE, only like, don't go too far with this 'cause he also tells wild stories full of incredible set pieces, a poet-novelist who fills his text with embodied ideas, symbolic notional associations within the books and within the oeuvre, that add the depth that great poets have. Following them is a GREAT pleasure, is an edifying pleasure, since the meanings are so smart about the world we have inherited and live in.  

Kirn, steady reviewer, free-lance maker-of-a-living and novelist himself, perhaps did not have the time for an attentive reading of M & D then. (he's over the top on Inherent Vice in today's NY Times). Many reviewers/critics said they did not have time to get AtD. 

Again, adding to what Robin wrote, I suggest: In the sentence quoted, take in the notions of spying, hiding from being spied upon, pervasive in AtD; and an "intelligence center' and clearing house for same. Remind you of anything in 'the real world"? Watch Pynchon find this kind of thing almost everywhere in history, in the history of AtD's time, at least. 

And, what does it mean to spy---or be spied on? Humanly, that is? 

Read quietly at your desk now.



--- On Sun, 8/23/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 9:32 AM
> 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.
>