James Wood On Pynchon's Characters

[Robert Jackson]

(Plain Text this time - sorry)

I was thinking also of episodes like the Advent sequence or Byron the  
Bulb where there is a visionary quality to the writing, the train of  
connections, the imagery, that I'd guess was drug-inspired; obviously  
edited and polished later on in a clearer and more professional (let's  
say) headspace. In IV and AtD that quality, that sense of vibrancy or  
enthusiasm or enjoyment (of the writing process as much as the drug- 
taking) is missing.

The turning away (or being turned away) from any real activism is an  
ongoing theme, the exhortation to Slothrop to engage in eco-activism  
or Dixon's violent assault on the slavedriver notwithstanding. They  
are exceptions, depicted as acts of exceptional bravery or fortitude.  
Denis is goofily likeable enough; Doc doesn't seem to have much follow- 
through in terms of wanting to do something about the corruption in  
high places or the evils of the corporate world which he uncovers  
either. He remains willingly allied to Bigfoot (just like Zoyd to  
Hector) despite all the protestations. It's cartoon fare ... as much  
Scooby Doo as it is Hammett, Cain or Chandler. Compared with the way  
that German Expressionist modes and style are embraced in GR, IV  
really is weak pastiche, both a cop-out and a sell-out, a parcel of  
parsley rather than hashish in your hollandaise.

Wood correctly points out in his letter how Thomas Jones' review of IV  
does pay the novel some backhanded compliments, both deliberately  
("Inherent Vice lacks much of the menace and the passion of its  
predecessors ... this flattening of affect .... Squint the right way,  
and what looked like wry indulgence morphs into nihilism.") and  
inadvertently, in those last two grabs:

			[...] And what Pynchon does with his characters,
	increasingly, is juvenile vaudeville. If you like that, fine. But in
	his review, Jones unwittingly gives two reasons why one might not:
	reading Pynchon’s new novel, he writes, ‘is probably as close to
	getting stoned as reading a novel can be’ (which he takes as high
	praise); and – apropos of Pynchon’s relentlessly jokey treatment of
	1970s California – ‘But there’s something profoundly bleak about the
	inability to take anything seriously’ (which he also envisages as a
	compliment, of sorts).
	
	James Wood
	Cambridge, Massachusetts
	
with best wishes

On 10/11/2009, at 12:42 AM, Laura wrote:

> Good point.  GR encourages drug use.  I've never dropped acid, but  
> after reading GR I sure wanted to.  Slothrop stretching out on the  
> crossroads, disintegrating, becoming one with Nature, is the sort of  
> turning on, tuning in, etc. that was the purported heart of the '60s  
> (drug, anyway)trip.  By contrast, reading IV is as meaningful as  
> being the lone straight person in a roomful of stoners -- it'd make  
> anyone want to run out and flush their stash.  The book makes any  
> drug use seem damn unattractive.  It seems deliberate, but I don't  
> think Pynchon's merely being priggish in his old age. Pot-smoking  
> led to the dippy idealism (personified by Denis, in particular) that  
> deflected any real social/political activism on the part of those  
> who copiously partook.  Maybe the paving stones covering the beach,  
> in the opening quote, are bricks of heroin, covered by a thatch-work  
> of marijuana.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Rob Jackson <jbor@[omitted]>
>
>
> >In IV, Pynchon seems to write alot about the processes of getting
> >stoned, describing it as an outsider or wannabe would, and it feels
> >and sounds pretty stale and humdrum as a result, whereas some of the
> >most beautiful passages and sequences in GR and M&D for example are  
> so
> >obviously trip-inspired. And there is a true and authentic sense of
> >immediacy to the experiences described (the getting, having, not
> >having, needing, wanting, not wanting, etc., of the illicit product  
> of
> >choice) in the earlier novels which is absent from IV.
>
>