I've read a lot of the discourse on Gravity's Rainbow, including some articles that made the book seem a whole lot less muddy than I believed, as long as one treats every detail as a metaphor. But this article is the first one that seems to have sidestepped the discourse altogether, to come at Pynchon orthogonally, historically, rather than getting sucked into the psychedelic hole of his charm. I like this view from the outside... though it strikes me as ironically Pynchonesque that you see a vast, spidery network of crypto-Pynchonian influence extending underneath modern lit. But you may well be right.
I haven't read Against the Day or Bleeding Edge, but I did all others. I like Pynchon, and he's amazing at what he does, but sometimes I want to grab him by the labels and beg him to concentrate and be a little more serious. I read Mason & Dixon last year, and it had some stunning sections, but so often it seemed like his other books just in a period costume. How many times can he gesture at the secret conspiracy without that trick getting old? Is it really so clever that he has George Washington smoking weed with his Black Jewish servant? At times the wonky intellectual swordplay seemed like the lame jokes of a fossilized stoner... And the hard layer of irony that encases everything--I'd like an author to talk to me straight, and not out of the corner of his mouth. Pynchon is in part so popular, I think, because his work is so cloaked in ambiguity and mystery; it invites people to spin their own theories, and to read greatness into what they cannot understand.
I've read a lot of the discourse on Gravity's Rainbow, including some articles that made the book seem a whole lot less muddy than I believed, as long as one treats every detail as a metaphor. But this article is the first one that seems to have sidestepped the discourse altogether, to come at Pynchon orthogonally, historically, rather than getting sucked into the psychedelic hole of his charm. I like this view from the outside... though it strikes me as ironically Pynchonesque that you see a vast, spidery network of crypto-Pynchonian influence extending underneath modern lit. But you may well be right.
I haven't read Against the Day or Bleeding Edge, but I did all others. I like Pynchon, and he's amazing at what he does, but sometimes I want to grab him by the labels and beg him to concentrate and be a little more serious. I read Mason & Dixon last year, and it had some stunning sections, but so often it seemed like his other books just in a period costume. How many times can he gesture at the secret conspiracy without that trick getting old? Is it really so clever that he has George Washington smoking weed with his Black Jewish servant? At times the wonky intellectual swordplay seemed like the lame jokes of a fossilized stoner... And the hard layer of irony that encases everything--I'd like an author to talk to me straight, and not out of the corner of his mouth. Pynchon is in part so popular, I think, because his work is so cloaked in ambiguity and mystery; it invites people to spin their own theories, and to read greatness into what they cannot understand.
Wonderful critical essay !