Thomas Pynchon Unmasked
February 26, 2020 12:19 PM Subscribe
Thomas Pynchon Unmasked The great California writer—if unknowingly—answers our questions about a U.S. Department of Jesus, moving back to the Golden State, and winning a Nobel Prize. By David Kipen
No "ifs" about it.
(Alta looks like an interesting follow.)
posted by notyou at 12:49 PM on February 26, 2020
(Alta looks like an interesting follow.)
posted by notyou at 12:49 PM on February 26, 2020
Timely. My Kindle says I'm 27% of the way through Gravity's Rainbow. This has to be my best effort so far. Hot diggity that guy could write a sentence. For instance, "She is his deepest innocence in space of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true... (emphasis mine) followed one dadgum sentence later by "You go from dream to dream inside me." Neither of which were in the "interview"but should have been. :)
posted by tayknight at 12:54 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by tayknight at 12:54 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
This is brilliant work by Kipen...
posted by PhineasGage at 12:58 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by PhineasGage at 12:58 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
kipen: why do you spend so much time on a community website from the 90s?
pynchon: a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into earth, green wet valleyed earth.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:27 PM on February 26, 2020 [25 favorites]
pynchon: a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into earth, green wet valleyed earth.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 1:27 PM on February 26, 2020 [25 favorites]
The name Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is itself Pynchonian.
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:43 PM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Cookiebastard at 1:43 PM on February 26, 2020 [5 favorites]
T-shirt suggestion (I'm in no way affiliated with the vendor or creator)
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:51 PM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:51 PM on February 26, 2020 [4 favorites]
I truly hope there's another book. A massive doorstop full of red herrings and dead-end subplots, zany pot-smoking paranoid hippies, a band, some hapless half-villains and as many pop-culture references as he's capable of at his age. I'd love to think he would tackle climate-change denial, even metaphorically.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:05 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:05 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
god i’m working on it okay sheesh these things take time
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:08 PM on February 26, 2020 [32 favorites]
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 4:08 PM on February 26, 2020 [32 favorites]
Given that I have problems with attention, a surprising number of books that I've read are very long and quite hard to read (largely because it was when I was commuting, or flying over the Atlantic or other occasions when I had a lot of time on my hands): Infinite Jest, Bleak House, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, and Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and V (which is pretty chunky). By read, I mean "I rubbed my gaze on most of the pages". I've always found Pynchon lots of fun, and remember enjoying his books a lot, though I confess I don't remember much detail from any of them. Apart from the duck in Mason & Dixon, of course, and that bit in Gravity's Rainbow, you know the bit.
Given the extent to which he's permeated American culture (at least to me as an outsider to that culture), it's interesting that the only thing to be adapted from his books is Inherent Vice.
I know one person who has met him, albeit fleetingly.
I'd have loved a White Visitation spin-off TV series, a cross between Agent Carter and The X-Files.
My favourite Pynchon parody is the spread in the infamous Howard the Duck issue #16, which I obviously didn't realise was a Pynchon parody for at least a decade after I read it.
posted by Grangousier at 4:54 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
Given the extent to which he's permeated American culture (at least to me as an outsider to that culture), it's interesting that the only thing to be adapted from his books is Inherent Vice.
I know one person who has met him, albeit fleetingly.
I'd have loved a White Visitation spin-off TV series, a cross between Agent Carter and The X-Files.
My favourite Pynchon parody is the spread in the infamous Howard the Duck issue #16, which I obviously didn't realise was a Pynchon parody for at least a decade after I read it.
posted by Grangousier at 4:54 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
I read once that Alexander Pope is considered to have had the highest IQ of any historical figure (yeah, a poet, not Newton or Einstein et al). This Pynchon cat, I wonder ...?
posted by Chitownfats at 6:33 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Chitownfats at 6:33 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Apart from the duck in Mason & Dixon, of course, and that bit in Gravity's Rainbow, you know the bit.
The lightbulb? The drinking game? The poop eating? I mean there is a lot of memorable stuff. The banana stuff in the first few pages even.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:52 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
The lightbulb? The drinking game? The poop eating? I mean there is a lot of memorable stuff. The banana stuff in the first few pages even.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:52 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
The candy scene.
posted by Oyéah at 7:18 PM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 7:18 PM on February 26, 2020 [8 favorites]
The English Candy Drill, of course.
Also, M&D, there's getting madly stoned with George & Martha Washington who keep going on about the benefits of growing hemp for the US economy or something. And, of course, the duck. And the chicken? Definitely, that poor chicken.
posted by hippybear at 8:00 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also, M&D, there's getting madly stoned with George & Martha Washington who keep going on about the benefits of growing hemp for the US economy or something. And, of course, the duck. And the chicken? Definitely, that poor chicken.
posted by hippybear at 8:00 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]
One might think that Lot 49 would be ripe for film adaptation, but I listened to the audiobook I somehow have not too long ago, and aside from that segment where Oedipa goes wandering around the city entirely consumed with paranoia and the muted trumpet which is VERY visual... most of the book is Oedipa engaged in an internal monologue and very little actual action takes place in the entire book. It would take a very specific screenplay or director to manage to capture the nature of Oedipa just NOTICING things and tying them all up into a knot inside herself.
posted by hippybear at 8:18 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:18 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
PYNCHON: The torso of the father solid and sure in its J. Press suit; the eyes of the daughters secret behind sunglasses rimmed in rhinestones…. Who could escape? Who could want to?
Fix, fix the tape, Crippen. Like an 87' Caprice, the VCR was durable, clad plastic solid state it's inside space for fingers .
San Frejejanjo was hot, Akhenaten hot. Clacking fan belt helps, nothing is sorted there, why go there, thier web gear has mildew and .556 is not rare, cal. But Cal might have it. But so might have Cloris Oocet and that was three weeks yonder. Parlance was a virtue, not today and grace a matter of contraband concealment with leather tags.
posted by clavdivs at 8:55 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
Fix, fix the tape, Crippen. Like an 87' Caprice, the VCR was durable, clad plastic solid state it's inside space for fingers .
San Frejejanjo was hot, Akhenaten hot. Clacking fan belt helps, nothing is sorted there, why go there, thier web gear has mildew and .556 is not rare, cal. But Cal might have it. But so might have Cloris Oocet and that was three weeks yonder. Parlance was a virtue, not today and grace a matter of contraband concealment with leather tags.
posted by clavdivs at 8:55 PM on February 26, 2020 [3 favorites]
there's getting madly stoned with George & Martha Washington who keep going on about the benefits of growing hemp for the US economy or something
Time for a reread. Yo, Tom, been done and all, but maybe Lewis and Clark? West Coast, big river, Washington state... knoamsayn bubs?
... on preview.... clavs you are the best emperor, yes, the best
posted by mwhybark at 10:33 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Time for a reread. Yo, Tom, been done and all, but maybe Lewis and Clark? West Coast, big river, Washington state... knoamsayn bubs?
... on preview.... clavs you are the best emperor, yes, the best
posted by mwhybark at 10:33 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Time for a re-read for me too. It was the least effortful long Pynchon to read for me, and I'd enjoy doing that again.
posted by hippybear at 10:41 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 10:41 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
(Against The Day I tried 4 times and then finally listened to the audiobook which was thrilling but ruined me for listening to audiobooks to this day.)
posted by hippybear at 10:41 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 10:41 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
I had a tough time with it. I’m more engaged with 19th c US history these days, so maybe it’ll take!
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by mwhybark at 10:44 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
My point was that I'm fantastically bad at remembering what's in a book the moment I shut it. It's a real problem, although good for detective fiction and comedy, very bad for textbooks, embarrassing for literary fiction (as a bit of questioning reveals that it appears that I've not read books I have, in fact read. I find it easier to pretend I haven't read them at all these days). Thank you for reminding me of all those bits, though.
posted by Grangousier at 12:40 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 12:40 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
You, too, Grangousier? That makes me feel so much better about my own amnesia for the substance of books and even movies that I could nevertheless confidently tell you I remember enjoying very much.
posted by PhineasGage at 12:58 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by PhineasGage at 12:58 PM on February 27, 2020 [3 favorites]
I read all of Pynchon’s novels last year (well the 2018/19 financial year that is) as a project. It was hard and I’m very proud of myself. I also don’t remember them (except for Bleeding Edge) even though I’ve read them all twice.
posted by mgrrl at 1:55 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by mgrrl at 1:55 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
PhineasGage - Yes! I remember I enjoyed the book, but I can't remember anything in the book - people say what about this bit or that bit and I look sheepish. If the book connects directly to me - something I practise outside the text like musical theory or a computer language or something psychological or philosophical I can bring to my life - I retain the information to the extent I practise it, but I can't just empty a book into my head and expect it to not just run out of my ears. I used to assume no one could remember anything they read, and was surprised it was not only possible but normal.
Ironically I used to typeset books, and, while doing corrections, was able to recall the position on a spread of a particular bit of text I'd dealt with before, possibly because I was interacting with the text as a thing, and it didn't matter whether I'd understood the text at all.
On the other hand there were some books I could read over and over - Finn Family Moomintroll, The Dancers at the End of Time or No Bed For Bacon - and I would enjoy it each time as much as the last, as the jokes were new every time. I suppose if I read a book enough times bits start to get hammered in to me, but even my most-read books I could probably remember a tenth of what's actually there.
I could read Gravity's Rainbow all over again, but I probably won't. It took ten years the first time. I'd quite like to reread V... I sort of experience books like places I've visited, and I miss the being-there, but rediscover the specifics of door-handles and paving stones all over again. I'd quite like to go back to V in the same way I'd quite like to go back to Barcelona.
posted by Grangousier at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ironically I used to typeset books, and, while doing corrections, was able to recall the position on a spread of a particular bit of text I'd dealt with before, possibly because I was interacting with the text as a thing, and it didn't matter whether I'd understood the text at all.
On the other hand there were some books I could read over and over - Finn Family Moomintroll, The Dancers at the End of Time or No Bed For Bacon - and I would enjoy it each time as much as the last, as the jokes were new every time. I suppose if I read a book enough times bits start to get hammered in to me, but even my most-read books I could probably remember a tenth of what's actually there.
I could read Gravity's Rainbow all over again, but I probably won't. It took ten years the first time. I'd quite like to reread V... I sort of experience books like places I've visited, and I miss the being-there, but rediscover the specifics of door-handles and paving stones all over again. I'd quite like to go back to V in the same way I'd quite like to go back to Barcelona.
posted by Grangousier at 4:03 PM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
I could read Gravity's Rainbow all over again, but I probably won't. It took ten years the first time.
I basically only got through it because I had a 90 minute each way bus commute to work for a while, which is enough enforced reading time to tie oneself up entirely into paranoid knots as the novel reaches its maximum and then have it all dismantled into chaos and noise with no meaning by its end.
That book really fucked with my reality. I have a desire to read it again, but still don't have the ambition. The same applies to House Of Leaves, which also fucked with me and I would also like to re-read, but haven't yet found it within myself.
The effects were different (Pynchon was more fun but more paranoid), but those two books have affected my experience of reality the most while reading them.
It's interesting how books can do that.
posted by hippybear at 9:07 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
I basically only got through it because I had a 90 minute each way bus commute to work for a while, which is enough enforced reading time to tie oneself up entirely into paranoid knots as the novel reaches its maximum and then have it all dismantled into chaos and noise with no meaning by its end.
That book really fucked with my reality. I have a desire to read it again, but still don't have the ambition. The same applies to House Of Leaves, which also fucked with me and I would also like to re-read, but haven't yet found it within myself.
The effects were different (Pynchon was more fun but more paranoid), but those two books have affected my experience of reality the most while reading them.
It's interesting how books can do that.
posted by hippybear at 9:07 PM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Whether you've bounced off Gravity's Rainbow or simply (!) want to revisit it, George Guidall's audiobook is a tour de force. His intonation conveys a proper understanding of every word.
posted by whuppy at 6:50 PM on February 28, 2020
posted by whuppy at 6:50 PM on February 28, 2020
Oh, there's a better audiobook? I ended up with a Books For The Blind reading which was so tedious I bailed after about 15 minutes. I'll have to look for that!
posted by hippybear at 7:17 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:17 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
Gravity's Rainbow has got raunchy bits. (I've not got a copy near me.) Some purposely-written-to-be-icky bits, true. But at the centre is an anti-war message spelt out in fleeting, parodic, absorbing and bizarrely touching scenes; characters whom you come to genuinely care about despite their pinpoint entanglements in the plot (large and small)'s fluctuatingly ridiculous nature--a legit depiction of war in that era and ours today, or so I've been told by WWII volunteers and conscripts (without giving away detail, in undercover résistance with infamous persons or as legitimate soldiers): of books originally written in English & set within that particular theatre (and yes, these books have unmistakable flaws in their treatment of the many persons of genders, identities, ethnicities who contributed), there are those who hold that Pynchon gets it, Vonnegut, Heller & his Catch-22, that certain pack. The sheer cognitive dissonance of being ordered into absurd ridiculous spycraft or inexplicable missions or just plain, let's face it, killings--while everyone around one pretends life goes on and sometimes you get a windfall of bananas--are precisely the sort of jumble-sale chaos and mad tenets being established as rationalizations for Why, particularly when on the 'Hans, are we the baddies?' side there is no coherent Why. (And the Allied are hardly given a break either.) Also for the grunt (unsure if this is the word) soldiers who've been dragged into a conflict on either side, are never permitted the larger picture, and act with confusion and impunity. Plus Pynchon is just hysterical. His prose can be heartbreaking and a delight and worse and truer, both.
In all his books, it seems Pynchon returns to vignettes and tidbits which coalesce and tally up into a sigma-summation of why people shouldn't hurt other people in these ways. The sheer idiocy of it. Why not have a good time? Why not learning, and discovery, and exploration? Guy was a hippie, yeah, I bet you might expect that, but it's lines or prose or paragraphs and interactions or quickfire interlocutor dialogues I find myself recollecting. Against the Day I vaguely recollect reading but it was a difficult time in my life so my memories are hazy but there were positive chunks scattered about. The number of WASTE posthorn tattoos in e.g. SF/NYC either afford the guy pain or glee or sustained grumbling, although Lot 49 has so many choice and true serrated-blade-to-the-heart-oof! quotes I have to love it. Mason and Dixon I've not read; Vineland I recall liking; I found the subject matter of Bleeding Edge a bit close for comfort at the time. And I wouldn't even call myself a fan, it's just that I love the bittersweet experience of luxuriating in his prose and the visceral-yet-surreal, ever so off-kilter worlds he conjures up for the reader. But reality's always been approximating that, headed asymptotic to such, hasn't it?
The only Pynchon book I physically (my preference is for paper pages) own at present is V, which I've been meaning to reread. It's imperfect, sure, but it's wonderful in its own way, IMHO. (NB: As a description of cosmetic surgery and particularly the WWII-era? rhinoplasty scene, my medical accomplices have told me it's well accurate given the era and utilizes procedures which wouldn't be unknown today. Except the surgeons thankfully don't break for a musical medley.)
His grasp of the Southern California landscape and its shifting dynamics over time have always been a source of fascination to myself, scholars and casual readers alike. I've been meaning to take a trip back to the locations, college bookshops, beaches which inspired him where I used to lounge with my library copies, not yet knowing as a kid that he knew the regions too well, in obscure jokes which hold true years later.
There's a dentistry cabal in Inherent Vice which I compared to a particularly unpleasant dentist on Yelp, and that review stayed up for quite a while before someone wised in to the analog (glaring, klaxon-sounding, don't take your kids or loved ones including yourself here apparently factored into the system as wacky elegantly-couched verbal pyrotechnics & the direct ref to Dead Ringers went unmissed) and got deleted.
posted by rallumer at 5:10 AM on March 3, 2020
In all his books, it seems Pynchon returns to vignettes and tidbits which coalesce and tally up into a sigma-summation of why people shouldn't hurt other people in these ways. The sheer idiocy of it. Why not have a good time? Why not learning, and discovery, and exploration? Guy was a hippie, yeah, I bet you might expect that, but it's lines or prose or paragraphs and interactions or quickfire interlocutor dialogues I find myself recollecting. Against the Day I vaguely recollect reading but it was a difficult time in my life so my memories are hazy but there were positive chunks scattered about. The number of WASTE posthorn tattoos in e.g. SF/NYC either afford the guy pain or glee or sustained grumbling, although Lot 49 has so many choice and true serrated-blade-to-the-heart-oof! quotes I have to love it. Mason and Dixon I've not read; Vineland I recall liking; I found the subject matter of Bleeding Edge a bit close for comfort at the time. And I wouldn't even call myself a fan, it's just that I love the bittersweet experience of luxuriating in his prose and the visceral-yet-surreal, ever so off-kilter worlds he conjures up for the reader. But reality's always been approximating that, headed asymptotic to such, hasn't it?
The only Pynchon book I physically (my preference is for paper pages) own at present is V, which I've been meaning to reread. It's imperfect, sure, but it's wonderful in its own way, IMHO. (NB: As a description of cosmetic surgery and particularly the WWII-era? rhinoplasty scene, my medical accomplices have told me it's well accurate given the era and utilizes procedures which wouldn't be unknown today. Except the surgeons thankfully don't break for a musical medley.)
His grasp of the Southern California landscape and its shifting dynamics over time have always been a source of fascination to myself, scholars and casual readers alike. I've been meaning to take a trip back to the locations, college bookshops, beaches which inspired him where I used to lounge with my library copies, not yet knowing as a kid that he knew the regions too well, in obscure jokes which hold true years later.
There's a dentistry cabal in Inherent Vice which I compared to a particularly unpleasant dentist on Yelp, and that review stayed up for quite a while before someone wised in to the analog (glaring, klaxon-sounding, don't take your kids or loved ones including yourself here apparently factored into the system as wacky elegantly-couched verbal pyrotechnics & the direct ref to Dead Ringers went unmissed) and got deleted.
posted by rallumer at 5:10 AM on March 3, 2020
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posted by Halloween Jack at 12:21 PM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]