new pynchon new pynchon new pynchon

even the weird, confusing part where the Chums end up incognito as students on a campus made more sense this time

Huh was just wondering today if Bleeding Edge will be his last book, revive got my hopes up!

sorry! no dedicated thread for ATD.

"dude sends me to wikipedia more than any other author"

yeah, was always pleasantly surprised to find out so many of the weird ass historical events referenced in his books were not just totally invented things.

TP would be on my COVID worry list if he hadn't been self-isolating for the past 50 years amirite

he wasnt on mine but now he is, i tht this was a (deprecated) RIP notice >:(

No dedicated thread for ATD. I'm about 180 pages in and really like it, even love it at moments. The Tom Swiftian opening is excellent and I never knew I wanted to know about labor unrest in 1890s Colorado.

One of my favorite parts of any Pynchon is when he outdoes Lovecraft in narrating the arctic expedition and what is brought back. Wiki says the destruction here is a reference to 9/11 NY. Also that the terrorism of the anarchists seems likewise drawing a sympathetic, or at least conflicted, viewpoint re: the 9/11 terrorists. Makes one wonder why he had to write an explicit 9/11 book later.

dude sends me to wikipedia more than any other author

He was quite a challenge in the days before the Internet.

suspect it's the beast from 20000 fathoms that he's thinking of / superimposing on 9/11 in that section (tho monster-as-cargo is more king kong, and the style is lovecraftian yr right). breathtaking yeah. remember thinking it a real trick that ATD is the most conventionally "human" of his doorstops-- about a family like it's the corrections, "optimistic" even (despite its final image being a castle in the air)-- while also being the one that's switching to a different pastiche every fifty pages. (even mason+dixon more or less sticks to just one.) reassembles the 19c novel out of postwar scraps.

(also his best title imo: a physical description of the 90-degree angle that is the book's "rainbow"; a phrase for millenarian preparation or insurance; the title of a polemic.)

I have already gotten some indications of acronyms of organizations popping up (like in GR) and perhaps the Chums of Chance org being conspiratorial. Is Pynchon going to link the origins of modern capitalism in M&D to the robber barons in AtD to the military industrial complex of GR? I sure hope so.

lol keep reading

you haven't even started the damn thing yet

love ATD so much

The section where Reef goes to find his father is like Pynchon doing Cormac McCarthy and is great.

The part where Lew goes to England is interminable.

lol is that the theosophical section, i liked that bit

(tbf i liked it all)

i need to reread it

the part I had the most trouble with was the weird bit in the middle where the Chums Of Chance go undercover and lose their identities

it was easier my second time through, but still

The only bit that threw me was the very end of the monster fourth section with Lew, which felt a bit tonally odd after the breathtaking wonders preceding it. But the subsequent coda restored matters at least

the part I had the most trouble with was the weird bit in the middle where the Chums Of Chance go undercover and lose their identities

― thinkmanship (sleeve), Friday, 15 April 2022 16:20 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

pure literary magic iirc

The sections so far with Lake Traverse and Deuce Kindred are really great. Almost Faulknerian in spots.

I add for posterity my reflection that Oedipa Maas in CL49 is an oddly more obscure character than we might think.

We know that she calls herself a political Republican (but almost nothing she says or does corroborates this - it's like a label that Pynchon conveniently attaches, but doesn't fulfil), and that she is a 'suburban housewife' - all this part of setting her up as an orthodox figure who can then be shaken up.

We know that she studied at Berkeley in the 1950s - English I think - probably graduating in 1957. That's as good as the back story gets.

As far as I recall, we don't know:

1: how she met Pierce Inverarity or why she had an affair with him.*

2: why she married Wendell Maas - as they don't seem to have anything in common - and don't seem to have had any plans to have children.

3: why she readily begins an affair with Metzger -- but more to the point here: why, as a married woman beginning an affair, she is not more worried about the consequences of sex, above all pregnancy. The guess must be that she is on the contraceptive pill - which would in turn relate to her marriage and, again, a reluctance to have children together. But as far as I recall, this is not mentioned, though it would arguably be a very new, 1960s theme and would relate to the drug aspects of the novel. A more general point here is that it does not seem to occur to Pynchon that contraception of some kind would be important to a woman in her position.

4: what has happened to her parents. Are they alive? If so, why, in increasing desperation, does she not think to contact them - or alternatively, think "Mom, I wish you were still around - I could sure do with your advice now"? Pynchon has made her effectively an orphan, but as far as I know he doesn't explain this.

*5: how old was Pierce Inverarity? Note that he died a few months before the novel begins, and changed his will a year earlier. He MAY have been killed by sinister forces (she wonders this near the end) - which would obviously be significant for the plot. Or he may have just died of illness (but then what illness?) or old age - but if the latter, how old was he? 70? That would make him over 40 years older than Oedipa!

I suspect that a few of the points above may in fact be addressed in the novel and that I have forgotten or missed them.

The most general point to emerge from these observations is that in this short novel, Pynchon rigged up something that feels quite plausible (Oedipa the housewife and her adventure), but in a way that actually has lots of holes and gaps that we probably don't notice because he keeps it moving fast. This principle could possibly be true of lots of other novels.

i don't know if this is helpful but this is the painting that oedipa remembers seeing = remedios varo's (embroidering the earth's mantle aka bordando el manto terrestre

https://nickholdstock.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/mantle.jpeg

I know it well and was thrilled to see it in person at Tate Modern this year !! (this is the centre of a triptych with two other parts - as you may know.)

Especially as someone who was raised as a Republican in the 1950s, and tended to think of myself that way into the early 60s---between the fall of McCarthy and the rise of Goldwater---I'm among those who think of it as being more inclusive back then, and a Berkeley grad who is curious, open-minded, has some educated sense of agency---but of isolation, of being a traveler, and is attracted to glimpses of the meaning of things, the order, the true System, whether it's something she's going to try to embrace or not---that sounds like a plausible Republican-identifying character to me.
She could eventually take it in a more Right or Left, John Birch or Aquarian direction, to where they might merge, in terms of conspiracy theories and "organic" pre-Covid anti-vaxxers etc, or not. Part of the attraction to Wendell "Mucho" Maas ("Mucho baby," as she addresses him at one point, indicating that he may well have mucho sex appeal), is the intensity and curiosity, idealistic tendencies, that they share, which he takes in the Aquarian direction, with LSD. Disturbing to her initially, but she may join him later, or go on a parallel path.
I think at this point some form of birth control could be understood by the reader as a given, ditto the sense of isolation I mentioned, in big old and modern California, with its own traditions of transition, whether she's literally an orphan or not. She's married, but not a period-stereotypical American Wife, incl. Mom, forever fixing dinner etc. He's currently preoccupied, maybe always has been to some degree, which may even be part of their compatibility, so far.

Also, it's hard to picture, unless she had a really open-minded and Cali-savvy Mom, consultations about Thurn Und Taxis and Wendell's adventures with LSD.

Hard to picture in that era, but doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Could have been good, but maybe taking away from the tension of her isolation, of mysteries left along the road to revelation, as can also happen off the page.

And of course California, the Promised Land and so on, is such a complicated place, grids and sprawl and sunshine and smog and so much else. Even if you just want to keep your head to yourself and write code or pan for gold or smoke it, you have to have a plan, develop it or find it, for The Purpose-Driven Life, even one with cruise control as your goal.

A leading physical metaphor for shore.

at some point in the last decade i realised i was kind of reading oedipa maas against joan didion: not that they're identical but there are some useful points of similarity (social background, sensibility perhaps) which help triangulate the differences (tho they don't really answer any of PF's questions)

(oedipa's husband briefly turns up again in vineland, the second in TP's "californian trilogy")

I strongly agree about the common ground between the texts ie: between Maas and Didion. There are a number of specific points of such common ground.

I had forgotten about the Vineland appearance, though did know of it. But I only ever read half of Vineland, and do not think it is my kind of novel.

re poster dow's post: it's not that I think CL49 should have a scene with OM's mother (though it could have been interesting for sure, and reminds me of another question: what was Oedipa Maas's maiden name?) -- rather that in 120 pages in which we feel intimate with this character and experience all her concerns, hopes and traumas, it's odd that she never once thinks of the existence or non-existence of any of her family (save her husband).

My general observation, again, is that there is an element of smoke & mirrors in the fictional process, in which OM feels quite a full and compelling character, but in some ways isn't; is a facade with less depth then we might think, who exists as a function and role ('actant'?) in the fiction and is less fully thought through and realised than she may seem.

I also reflected that the one novelist who WOULD, for good or ill, have thought through family backstory and brought it in, is ... Franzen.

Maxine Tarnow in Bleeding Edge is possibly TRP compensating for the underwritten aspects of Oedipa - she's a much more fully drawn mum-gumshoe. Though funnily enough Mike Davis thought this was a virtue of CoL49 in comparison to Didion - he praised the novel for "wasting no time grappling with the alienation of its subject".

That sounds a good comment from Davis (whom I've almost never read).

I agree that Bleeding Edge comes over like a return to CL49 territory (I suspect that INHERENT VICE did too), though I also thought it was dire.

On the 50th anniversary of Gravity’s Rainbow’s publication, it’s worth remembering that Laurie Anderson once asked Thomas Pynchon if she could stage it as an opera. His answer? Yes, as long as the whole thing was scored solely for banjo pic.twitter.com/jh0REahy0O

— David Hering (@hering_david) February 28, 2023

Paging Bela Fleck…

Lol

Part of the attraction to Wendell "Mucho" Maas ("Mucho baby," as she addresses him at one point, indicating that he may well have mucho sex appeal)

"Mucho" means "Lot." Oedipa is Lot's wife.