When I was a kid there was a TV movie called A Circle of Children, starring tons of ’70s folks, and most especially featuring Albert from Little House on the Prairie, aka Matthew Labyorteaux as Brian O’Connell.
Brian was a young boy no one could understand. That is, until someone (Jane Alexander?) slowed down a tape recording of him and figured out he was just talking super fast.
<mind. still. blown.>
As a fast-talker myself, I always related to the pathos. And it came back to me this week in a meandering way, as I found myself reliving some literary version of that triumphant slow-it-all down moment.
I tackled TCoL49 for the first time two or three years back, and I loved it flaws and all. But I’m sure I also absorbed about 35%. Slowing things down this week, underlining character names and favorite quotes, reading passages aloud, it was like figuring out that Brian (aka Thomas Pynchon, ok this is getting ornate), was talking all along. With words!
I also had the ongoing joy this time around of one of the best Meander Comment Threads I can remember, including helpful links to paintings and Baby Igor-inspired rock n roll, choice lines galore, and reminiscences from SoCal childhoods.
All to say, very grateful to be on this journey together, and jazzed to dive into Week 2.
Speaking of which….
This coming week: Won’t you please enjoy all of Chapter 3, adding your comment on this post, pausing perhaps to tie your shoes at the bottom of HP (Harper-Perennial) page 63, where “the disk jockey talking was her husband, Mucho.”
Figure 2.1: The actor who played Albert on Little House on the Prairie (above) also won the U.S. Pac-Man championship in 1982, which seems like too much damn talent for one ’70s/’80s teen. Can you imagine losing to him and thinking, “but you already got to be Albert!” ?
The Courier’s Tragedy feels to me like eight or ten Pynchons were having a sleepover and decided to play And Then: you have to write the next clause of the story, and whoever ends the last sentence loses.
I had a Manny di Presso rookie card, back when he was fresh out of 3L and everybody thought of him as a slap hitter. Late ’70s, I dug out my collection and found out the pack was priceless but the card was worthless. In the ’60s they were shaping the gum like animal crackers, and the stick that came with Manny was in the form of an EMT wagon. I was just chewing the gum from my packs. None of us knew that Manny was the only player to get that shape, the most valuable gum in the world: the “ambulance Fleer”.
This passage, which made me chuckle, wonderfully exemplifies the absurdist tone of the book: “ … around noon or possibly toward dusk, the two ships sighted each other. One of them may have fired, if it did then the other responded … “ What are we supposed to believe? What is real?