Late Pynchon

I finished Bleeding Edge last week. It was...good.

Thomas Pynchon is a certified genius and a literary giant. Some of his earlier books, V, The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow are amazing perfect masterpieces that will twist up your brain for years. This is the problem. He was too good.

It seems like he's in cruise control now. Where his earlier books were capital-L Literature, his newer work is just fiction. Vineland, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge are probably his 3 weakest books. But they're good books! Just not Peak Pynchon-level good. His early work is so dang good that his later stuff just seems like filler.

Frustratingly, he's shown sings of old self in his new work. Lots of people liked Mason & Dixon. (I didn't care for it, but still..) Against the Day was really great too.

I hope that he knows. I hope he's just easing into retirement. Tossing out pretty decent books with little effort. Making bucks.

Kurt Vonnegut (so good!) famously gave all his books grades, A-F, like a report card. And he knew which ones were good and which ones weren't. I hope Pynchon is similarly self-aware.

This is blasphemy, but here's how I would grade him:

V. (B+)
The Crying of Lot 49  (A)
Gravity's Rainbow  (A+)
Vineland  (C)
Mason & Dixon  (B-)
Against the Day  (A)
Inherent Vice  (C)
Bleeding Edge  (B-)

Pynchon's Heroine

Maxine Tarnow

Freelance Fraud Investigator / Inspiration for Fan Art

Bleeding Edge Cover Analysis

The cover art for Bleeding Edge is typically, Pynchon-esquelly, complicated. The thing has about 10 layers of symbolism, referencing skyscrapers, city streets, data centers, older Pynchon novels, and more. There is even a visual trick built into the printing process -- the cover appears black and white but shimmers into color when you look at it from another angle (couldn't possibly be anymore Pynchon-y.)

Here's a good breakdown of the cover:
http://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Bleeding_Edge_cover_analysis

Selection for April/May

Bleeding Edge
by Thomas Pynchon

The Meaning of a Line

On the surface, Mason & Dixon is partially a buddy comedy and partially a dual character study. But at heart, it's the story of a line.

The basics (from wikipedia (where else?)): From 1763-1767, Mason (an astronomer) and Dixon (a surveyor) used celestial measurements to form an accurate, east-to-west, 233-mile-long line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and a north-to-south, 83 mile-long line between Maryland and Delaware. The boundary was to settle a border dispute between the colonies and crown. It would also become a key demarcation line in struggle over slavery in the states.

 Along this line, M&D created "the Visto." An arrow-straight, astronomically precise line of cleared trees and milestones. Basically a perfect, clear line, due west, through the wilderness.

Of course, there was some complicated math to be done at the corner, leaving a technical no-man's-land called "The Wedge." All of this is real. (The wedge is now officially part of Delaware.)

Now, the true focus of the book is the physical and psychological effect of the line. Drawing a line creates a boundary were there was none. It creates two distinct groups where there was only one. It labels those above the line "Northerners" and those below "Southerners." It creates a road, easily passable, where there was no safe passage before.

It also has spookier aspects. It serves as a channel for flow: of good and evil energies, of commerce, of ideas. Upon coming to the line, all things are drawn along its length.

Also consider, it is a 233 mile long line, marked with piles of stones each mile, inscribed on the face of a spinning planet. Thus it is a giant, rotating antenna, sending or receiving - what exactly?

The precision, the flow, the labeling and defining, the connecting, the separating, the sha.

The lesson being: To draw a line is to change the world. (?)

BONUS FACT:

The US-Canadian border is not just a line on a map. There is literally a 20-foot wide swath of cleared trees running for the full 5000 plus miles.

See more here: http://www.7dvt.com/2013why-there-slash-trees-u-s-canada-border

And here:  http://io9.com/this-is-the-totally-bonkers-story-of-the-us-canada-bord-512961402

Long Haul

The book is a doorstop but I'm almost done...193 43 pages to go. I wanted to finish by the end of November. Possible, but unlikely.

List-style plot updates:

* Feng Shui on a Continental Scale
* Wolf Jesus
* Captain Zhang
* Mason and the Time Loop
* Tenebrae and Ethelmer: Kissing Cousins?
* Strange Sounds in the Forest
* Church in the Cave
* George Washington
* Ben Franklin
* The Electric Eel
* etc.

Vaucanson and the Automatic Duck

Almost everything in Mason and Dixon is based on historic fact. Pynchon takes a lot of liberties but the foundation is always true.

Near the middle of the book we meet an automatic duck, a piece of machinery, an automaton, created by one M. Vaucanson, who discovers how to love (the duck), quickly evolves beyond the bounds of its mechanical being and falls in love with a french chef. While the story of the duck's discovery of love and subsequent evolution are pure fiction, Vaucanson and his Canard Digérateur, or "Digesting Duck" are real.

Canard Digerateur

Jacques de Vaucanson was a french inventor in the early 1700s. Famous for creating highly complex automata and mechanical devices, including the first completely automated loom. (wikipedia). He designed the Canard to "eat", "digest", and "defecate."

It didn't actually look the picture above. Here's the real thing:

This is Pynchon's approach. Blending fact and fiction. You can't trust anything. The most absurd passages turn out to be fact, and when you think you have the whole truth, it turns out you don't know the half of it.

In other news:  I'm only halfway through this book, so we're going to stick with it for another month. OK.

Cheap Shot

Upon being insulted by Dixon:

" '-- Inexpensive Salvo,' Mason notes."


Funny, yeah?

Pynchon's Comedy

Pynchon likes to use his giant genius brain to make lots of low-brow dirty jokes.  Here's a funny article from Slate about it:  http://slate.me/1evZQJm

Pynchon's books are dripping with his sense of humor. High brow, low brow, super subtle, and slapsticky. One can practically see a smirking Pynchon typing out each sentence, even the more straightforward ones.

All light from the outside vanishes as something fills the Doorway.
"Gaahhrrhh!" it says.

Mason & Dixon is written in a pseudo-Olde English style, with random capitalization and lots of apostrophes. For example, in this passage, Dixon is expressing remorse for an altercation in his past where he threw a man at a dart board.

 "I admit, 'twas the improper way to test thee for Cranial Acuity, - I ought to have ta'en the Board from the Wall, brought it to thee, and then clash'd it upon thy Nob, tha Bugger."

You can almost hear Pynchon giggling when he types "clash'd it upon thy Nob."

Paranoia vs. Removal-of-blinders

Mason & Dixon are on an island in the southern latitudes to observe the transit of venus. They climb the hills to the island's interior and look out at the sea, remarking that the water appears higher than the land, as if poised to swallow the island. Our narrator says:

"For anyone deluded enough to remain down at sea level, there must come a moment when he finds himself looking upward at the Crests approaching."

This sentence is not about waves. It's classic Pynchon telling us dummies to get our heads out of the sand and look around. To question everything. To see the hidden power structure behind the seemingly random events of the world. And then to see even deeper to the hidden power behind the power. And on and on.


"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Look up and see the coming waves before it's too late!

Trust no one!

Open your eyes, sheeple.

Etc, etc.

Talking Dogs & Rhyming Songs

I was worried about this book being different from the other Pynchon books that I like so much, but then I found a talking, singing dog less than 20 pages in. This will be fine.

Selection for September/October

Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon wrote some of the most influential novels of the century. Hyper-smart (His IQ is allegedly 190, one of the highest ever recorded), intensely private (There are only 4 or 5 pictures that exist online and 2 of them don't show his face. One is just his hand and two others show him in his twenties..he's 76 now) and funny (he's been on the Simpsons with a paper bag over his head). All of his books are brilliant and hilarious.

I've read most of his books - V, The Crying of Lot 49, Slow Learner, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, Against the Day, Inherent Vice. But I skipped one, Mason & Dixon from 1997. It's very long.

Pynchon is known for his paranoid, big-brother, conspiracy theory stuff. But Mason & Dixon really is the story of Mason & Dixon, the guys that drew the Line. It's fictionalized and massively weird, but it doesn't seem typically Pynchonian.

It's been sitting on my shelf for 5 years so I'm just going to read it now. It's the longest book we've done on the blog. But summer is over and it's time to get real. Plus, Pynchon has a new book coming out next month and I don't want to be two books behind.


Lots of people have tried tracking down Thomas Pynchon and it has led to some great pieces of writing:

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/48268/index1.html

http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/06/thomas-pynchon-back-new-york/66140/