I'm compelled to make these comparisons, I guess because they're the 2 books in the syllabus that seem to compete the most directly: length/scope, early vs. late, which one is "better," etc. But the distinct impression that I kept getting during "Last Transit" was that there was a very serious concern for the relationship between fathers and sons. Someone suggested it had something to do with Pynchon's relationship with his own father, after the birth of Jackson Pynchon. I'd buy it. The scene with Doc Isaac at Dixon's grave was just so beautifully rendered and unexpected; it was almost powerful enough to suggest its own centrality in the task of the novel...an awfully roundabout way to get there, but hey.
As for the Underground stuff, I'm beginning the process of paging thru my notes and highlighting some candidate-episodes for inclusion in the paper. Concurrently, I'm starting to see the edges of the thesis-region on the horizon. I think I want to say something along the lines of the Underground -- in all of its associations with the Night, with revolt, with folklore, with hiding, with magic, etc. -- being not just a haven for Counterforces/-ers, but also a node of potentiality, oftentimes a dangerous one (a la the way Dixon fears that whatever lives in the Cave will one day seek revenge on the Anglicans that use it as a church). I think Pynchon also creates "Undergrounds" at the level of the texts themselves, systems and shapes that in our discovery of them as readers, and subsequently in our discovery of their often contradictory and "incomplete" natures, which subvert/reimagine the act of reading. I think that under that same controlling theme, I would also have room to comment on Pynchon's reappropriation of scientific language, which creates levels of meaning (in this sense, it creates an "underground" level of meaning below the surface level) in language that is supposedly "strictly factual" -- perhaps using the epigraph from Cherrycoke about what exactly "History" is, in relation to fact and memory.
Lately, I've begun to wonder if Pynchon might object to the idea of academic papers being written on his novels. Each of the 4 novels I've read for the course so far have been at least partly a polemic against the idea of humanity being "used." I think at some earlier point, during the posts on GR, I made a reference to Oscar Wilde's intro to Dorian Gray: "All art is quite useless." I think I wanted to say that it seemed to me, Pynchon was in agreement here, and that the idea of "uselessness as resistance" and as a method of survival in our world greatly informs his aesthetic vision. Does it follow that to "use" his novels for a grade in the (dare I say it) overwhelmingly bureaucratic and commercial education system would be antithetical to their message? Obviously, I only half-think this, because otherwise, I probably wouldn't be posting on the site. Actually, now that I think about it, the form of the class (blog-post, independent reading/thinking, etc.) is pretty removed from all that stuff that gets in the way of education. I guess it's just the idea of using Pynchon in the standard "college paper on literature" fashion. This is also probably very closely related to a rationalization of my rising vernal laziness.
So this post is shorter than normal, and not really full of close-reading like the others, but don't worry, I'm keeping busy. At this point, I think a lot of it would probably just look like annotating and asterisk-izing the notes that are already mostly annotation and asterisk. I am kind of excited to get working on this paper though.
A few clarifying questions.
1. What is a "Ley"? I have a sort of idea (read: I have read the Wikipedia article on "Ley lines") but I didn't know if you might be able to give me a more simplified definition?
2. How am I supposed to read the inflection in Dixon's voice when he ends a statement with "...?" Is it just a sort of inquisitive rise in pitch? Just looking for your preference here.
3. Would you say Against the Day is "worth reading"? Trying to put together a little summer reading list. Very unrelated, I'm sorry.
4. Even more unrelated, but...I remember reading a story in your Short Fiction class about a weird creature that lives on the stairs in some man's house and its presence is a source of weird unresolved anxiety. It was by either Borges or Kafka (strange not to be able to figure out which one) and I can't remember the title.
Matt
P.S. -- I'd be really interested in that stuff about Shakespeare and dolphins that you mentioned...? If I've got to wait till it's officially published, that's cool, but it just struck me as really interesting.
I'm glad you share my high opinion of M&D, & I basically agree with you that it's GR's evil twin, or maybe GR is the evil one. Parabola versus line, which is the shape of our history? Where GR is clearly tragic, a history of the fall (in my u/g days I wrote a very long paper on GR, the sublime, and the War in Heaven in Milton's Paradise Lost), M&D has a more comic/redemptive flavor, esp in its sentimental closing lines, which also call back to the end of GR. I think those will be the 2 big novels that define this career, 50 years from now.
ReplyDeleteI'm very interested to see the Underground paper & like your thoughts about it. I suppose we should come up with a deadline. May 6? I'm flexible.
Answers to your questions --
1. I think "ley" mostly means "line," with a hint of mystical flavor (ie, ley-lines are ancient geomagical trails).
2. Dixon's half-questions might be interesting to figure out -- maybe a questioning, skeptical, quasi-scientific attitude? He slides out of focus with the emotional/parental focus on Mason's family, but I think Dixon is very interesting too. The episode with the Driver's Whip is worth thinking about as a climax in the novel.
3. *Against the Day* is a bit frustrating, but it's worth reading.
4.That's Kafka's Odradek in "Cares of a Family Man," which sometimes has a different title depending on the translation. I think of it as a very Pynchon-ist story, about the emotional life of inanimate objects.
Would Pynchon like academic criticism? I think most novelists aren't wild about it. But surely the novels themselves recognize that even *Mindless Pleasures* are constantly & necessarily getting rationalized, in the Force/Counterforce tug of war?
May 6th seems a-okay to me.
ReplyDeleteI reread the Odradek story...it was even weirder than I remembered. Apparently last year someone in I think Minneapolis or Chicago (or one of those mid-western wherevers) staged it as a play to mixed reviews. Weird impulse though, never would have thunk of it that way.
I've got an outline of the key Underground episodes I think I'll be using, with a host of of lines, passages, ideas, etc. from other places to (hopefully) support those primary ones.
From *Lot 49*
--- Essentially, just Oedipa's wild blur of a night in San Narciso that leads to the Old Man
From *Gravity's Rainbow*
--- Slothrop in the Toilet
--- The Mittelwerke
--- Finding Saure Bummer inside a tree trunk / Becoming Raketemensch
From *Vineland*
--- The Pisk twins history of 24fps
From *Mason & Dixon*
--- The Jenkins Ear Museum
--- The Subterrenean Cavern
--- The Missing 11 Days (temporal underground)
--- Dixon's Hollow Earth Adventure
So a few of these could probably be better sorted as secondary evidence, but just so you have a general idea. Any glaring absences?
I can't think of any glaring absences, but I wonder if you can do justice to even that many in roughly 20 pp. Maybe just focus on GR v M&D, as we've discussed? You could use Lot 49 as a kind of intro, but should not feel obligated to cover 4 (or even 3) novels. Focus is better than breadth.
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice recent reading of Odradek in the book *Vibrant Matter* by Jane Bennett. The thing-ness of things...