James Wood On Pynchon's Characters

[kelber at mindspring.com]

OK, I'll modify that to say it encouraged drug use in me -- or at least regret that I hadn't used drugs more.

LK

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Nov 9, 2009 10:02 PM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: James Wood On Pynchon's Characters
>
>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.
>> > 
>> > 
>> 
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