James Wood On Pynchon's Characters

[Mark Kohut]

Laura wrote:
> Good point.  GR encourages drug use. 

Neither I, nor anyone I know who is not on this list who has read GR has ever felt/stated this when I have discussed the book. No One. 

And GR does not encourage drug use......hugs, fear-reducing huddles, new perceptions (after the paranoia), small kindnesses, compassion and understanding, mostly. IMHO.

GR is by itself better than ANY drug trip I would ever want to take...
Talk about mind-expanding.............





--- On Mon, 11/9/09, Robert Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:

> From: Robert Jackson <jbor at bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: James Wood On Pynchon's Characters
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Monday, November 9, 2009, 9:35 PM
> (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.
> > 
> > 
>