New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day

[Mark Kohut]

Dear Other Mark,

The style is the man. I think it is very much a part of P's vision that he
loads meanings the way he does. How might a writer break through a world's simple bars--linguistic, but like steel bars on prison windows---  of denial? With 'clear' realism? Piles 'em meanings on with those famous, oft-dissed 'lists". (You are reading AtD with the help of the great wiki on it, aren't you? Ask oldsters what it was like trying to read GR back in the day. One could also write essays on how P writes in semi-allegories of ideas like countless writers from the famous totalitarian regimes have---and I've bet some scholars have. 

Offlist I would tell you how 'stupid' I was in my first (attempted) readings of Pynchon. Many of us were. (Some still think I am, I'm sure. So it goes.)

Look: I just picked up a copy of Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens" because I have never read nor seen that play and I want to encounter ALL of Shakespeare before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

In the intro by some S. scholar I read about the 200-year attempt, ongoing
still ---it took 200 years or so for readers to even NOTICE the 'problem'!--to 'get 5 LINES understood properly. 5 enjambed, mysterious pronoun-pointing lines 
that are not "clear"....

5 lines!.......and P ain't Shakespeare, nor was meant to be. 

I now think of that fact when we go back-and-forth on possible P meanings hereon.  

Yours,

Namesake

--- On Sun, 8/23/09, Mark Abell <mea505 at cox.net> wrote:

> From: Mark Abell <mea505 at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day
> To: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009, 10:08 AM
> I'll stick around -- and continue to
> ask questions as I read -- as long as I am not criticized
> for asking the question(s). I've talked with others on
> different groups -- and individuals -- and they (mostly)
> thought of me as being stupid for not being able to grasp
> that which Pynchon was trying to say. I'm getting frustrated
> reading AtD, but I want to continue, as I don't like not
> completing a book; but, at the same time, I also want to be
> able to enjoy it. I "get" the need for research. If only he
> (Pynchon) would write so that the reader can understand the
> sentences and syntax.
> 
> -- M
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>;
> "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:01 AM
> Subject: Re: New Reader, Pynchon: Against the Day
> 
> 
> 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.
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>