Meander

Happy Sunday Meanders — we are well and into the home stretch. Just two more tiny weeks to wrap. And yet, and yet: plenty of roadway for anyone who’s behind to catch up and make the lunge to the back cover. And you know, just imagine the holiday conversations as you try to explain what the hell to friends and family.

Thanks as always for a rich comment thread. It’s a gift to read these every week as a live communal response to the Intentionally Overcharged Adventures of Oedipa Mass.

Like many, I especially enjoyed this stretch. Like some, the Bay Area locations helped keep me tethered. And maybe this one is just me, but I’m pretty sure I met Stanley Koteks when I used to visit computer game companies in the mid-90s. I don’t think we talked, but he looked up when I walked by, unimpressed. No sensitive, me.

This coming week: What say we regroup at the end of Chapter 5, aka page 120 (HP). Please add your comment to this post although “by then it was too late to make any difference.”

Have a good week, and may all your trumpets stay unmuted. Assuming that’s a good thing. And maybe it’s not?

I’ve been reading the comments right after I finish each section and that is such a rich dang experience. Thanks for the hellos, for the nuanced takes, for the fact checking and the flights of fancy. And thanks to Pynchon for sunken bones, floating heads, a courier’s tragedy (controversial to our crew), and a quick call-back to Metzger’s hairpiece.

Lots to think about. But the standout for me right now is the sense so many have that this reading experience is designed to trigger some firsthand discomfort and paranoia. How it is, somewhere near its core, a song sung by and to a band of paranoids

When we Meandered White Noise, many of us felt the plot was mirroring what we were living through day to day (2020). And it looks like late 2025 is a good time to tackle TCoL49.

“Is that real?” “Where have I heard that name?” “How does this fit together?” “What’s up with this grand communication conspiracy?” It’s all a little on the nose. But in a good way.

And if Pynchon seems to be sometimes having a little too much fun, I’m enjoying picturing him pause after a particular bit to giggle. The room is full of smoke, or maybe a couple kinds of smoke. It’s a thing.

This coming week: Speaking of pausing, this week we are going to catch our breath in the middle of a chapter. I know I know! Page 89 (HP), mid-Chapter 5. Please add your comment below when someone asks, “How’d you get a name like Arnold Snarb?” Thanks for your indulgence!

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!” ?

Hey nice people — you made it! And with that, welcome to Week 1, in which we launch this hardy crew out onto the trail. Just a reminder that we are slow-cooking this time around. You may have read the book before or you may be tempted to jump ahead, but humor me, won’t you? Let’s keep our focus on these weekly 30-page sprints and savor the Pynchon together.

I’m reading the Harper Perennial (HP) paperback, but there are plenty of other editions — for anyone taking another path, I’ll do my best to include a quote you can use to hang your hat on, whatever medium or printing you choose.

For those new to Pynchon I’ll share the one tip I’ve figured out with my modest experience — just to enjoy the sentences. Sometimes I get a little lost I’ll admit. But pretty much every page has a sentence to underline and delight in. And so we turn the pages, gem to shimmery gem.

So remind me one more time, how’s this thing work?

We’ll be reading T C of L 49 over the next 5 weeks — each week I’ll post the next week’s target. Read along, comment on each thread by week’s end, make it to the finish line, and you qualify for some unique digital thing I’ll figure out on the other side….

As always, I believe in you and your ability to read a book in thinly-sliced increments and post on a blog. I don’t know about everyone — but you? You’re a sure bet to make it to the end!

This week: Enjoy chapters 1 and 2, adding your comment (pithy or otherwise) here, pausing for some water and perhaps a slice of orange at the bottom of HP 30, where After a while, she said “I will.” And she did.

Upward and forward!

-Cecil

Welcome back to you, and to me too!

That’s right, friends — after a 5 year hiatus, on Sunday October 5 Meander shenanigans start up again, this time with a mini-Meander™ of Pynchon’s micro-masterpiece, The Crying of Lot 49.

We’ll be doing some slow cooking this time out — 30 pages a week, 5 weeks for the journey. Plenty of time to savor the goodness. Also, there’s a lot going on, right? But who couldn’t use a distraction in a moment like this?

If you’ve Meandered before, the only other difference is that I’m not planning a physical prize (alas!), but there still will be winners (yay!), and I’ll figure out something digital I can send your way to celebrate your glory (woohoo!).

If you’re planning on diving in, drop us a note in the comments to let us know. And I’ll see you back here in a couple of weeks. (early adopters — I might need to approve your comment as we kick off jfyi…)

Optional primer for new folks

21 years ago (!) a bunch of started reading challenging books together and commenting online, and we found joy in the endeavor. At first we called these “Deathmarches” and our first time out was ye olde Gravity’s Rainbow Deathmarch. During Covid-times we morphed these from Deathmarches to the kinder gentler Meanders, starting with the eerily appropriate for the time White Noise Meander.

How this works: Starting October 5, I’ll send out a note to folks on the path, and post a post here on Cecil.

You’ll have a week to read about 30 pages and to drop a comment when you’re done. Comments range from “I’m behind!” to erudite and entertaining observations on favorite passages, cross-cultural currents and more.

All comments are equally wonderful in the eyes of the great Meanderer in the sky. Finish and comment each week and you win! Oh, and don’t sweat it if you’ve never read this before or it’s your first time through — all wanderers welcome….

What happens next? Drop a comment on the thread to let us know if you are going to dive in. And get yourself a copy of the book and hide it somewhere so you aren’t tempted until we flip that first page a few Sundays hence. Any questions, just leave a note…

Thanks all for the company and the community. You are a light.

-Cecil le V.

What just happened:
Some sections are easier to relate to than others. And then there was this week’s parsha. Two years ago there wouldn’t have been much to work with here. This year it read like a practical and super relevant how-to guide for people learning to live together, when living together means living with disease.

Read more

What just happened:
This was a big one — the laws of kashrut (aka how to be kosher), including surprising news about bunnies and bats!

Of possible note:

• The gestures, the rituals, the blood, the burning — I had never thought of it this way before, but today it really struck me how much these directions felt like spells and incantations, a pinch of this and a dash of that… And of course, follow them to the T if you want to avoid the fate of Nadab and Abihu. (Spoiler: you want to avoid the fate of Nadab and Abihu.)
• For a book filled with people who live in gray moral spaces, who are more human than paragons, the Torah sometimes draws awfully sharp lines. There’s the sacred and the profane. There are animals you can eat, and animals that are abominations. There aren’t many animals for example, that I wouldn’t recommend you eat, I’m mean they’re kind of gamey, but suit yourself.
• Speaking of kind of gamey, who knew bunnies aren’t kosher? Clearly not my beloved Aunt Ruth. Likewise, who knew that bats were birds? Total curveball, that.
• Curveballs aside, a wise fellow reader pointed out to me that all these rules, these details, create a life infused with reminders of the sacred. Which made me wonder what I might do to add a little more sacred to my day to day.

What just happened:
Leviticus opens with several laws of sacrifice and the details therein which are, let’s be honest, alarming for anyone who either likes pigeons or believes blood should be dashed on the wall rarely if at all.

And I thought to myself, Leviticus, your reputation precedes you. Because that’s pretty much what I know of this third book — that it’s a set of rules, rules and more rules, associated with the Levites.

For the first few pages of this section, I thought there wasn’t much in the way of a picture idea that I could glean. The pigeon thing threw me. And it was interesting to learn we aren’t supposed to eat fat. (Clearly no one told my grandma Lilly that because: schmaltz.)

But I didn’t see how I could use the above in my day to day. Then, pulling back, I did in fact glean a few things that perhaps I was taking for granted on first skim.

Of note:

• First off, there’s the embedded message that everyone sins — priests, nations, individuals — we all sin.
• Happily, there is also a path to forgiveness. It’s possible to make up for our sins. To take action — to do something to right our wrongs. The key might be acknowledging the mistake, and marking that acknowledgement with care and an odor that God finds pleasing. Hard to argue with that.
• And it turns out, ignorance doesn’t get you off the hook. If you later realize you did wrong, you still need to make amends.

These are ideas that feel pretty widely accepted today. Sin is universal. But with conscious thought and effort we can move forward.

It’s easy to align these ideas with confession, for example.

I wonder though if they were that widely accepted at the time. As a novel notion, they would be revolutionary.

What just happened:
The tabernacle is built and the Lord makes an appearance, as we finish Exodus. What’s a tabernacle, you ask? Wikipedia defines it thusly:

According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tabernacle, also known as the Tent of the Congregation, was the portable earthly dwelling place of Yahweh used by the Israelites from the Exodus until the conquest of Canaan.

And Wikimedia Commons offers this lovely image from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations:

Of note:

• My co-readers had a wonderful reflection about this being the first great work of former slaves who had helped build Egypt. Now they build for themselves.
• Meanwhile, I ruminated on the (let’s be honest) bizarre amount of detail this week’s portion was serving up. I’m just saying, you have to be confident that you have your audience locked in if you’re going to dive this deep. Melville did it. Pynchon does it repeatedly. Nice to see the Torah was written by confident folks, with no fear that they would lose their crowd in details of acacia wood, gold, copper, crimson yarns, linen, dolphin skins, lapis lazuli, spices, oil, flesh hooks, goat’s hair, cups shaped like almond-blossoms, and the extraordinary tabernacling skills of Bezalel, son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah.
• Adversity creates community. As can a shared past. Building something massive and mighty also bonds people with a sense of a common purpose, the common good, an appreciation for the moment and a stake in the future.
• Looking at the image above, it’s clear that the tabernacle is more than an extravagant tent or gold-covered arc. It’s a mobile town. A place you can carry with you. No surprise that it would be so precious to this wandering people in search of a home.

In brief:

The gang brings Jethro up to speed, and God makes a memorable appearance.

A couple of thoughts:

• Where much of Exodus thus far has hit me with a political vibe, this one seemed to be full of great work advice. For example, Jethro basically tells Moses “you really have to learn to delegate — everyone will be happier if you do.” Ancient advice that people have been ignoring for a few thousand years. Likewise, it had never hit me before today how interesting it is that “take a day off” is one of the top 10 most important things you can do. Don’t murder, don’t steal. And take a chill day, because God did.
• I always figured don’t lie was a commandment. But that’s not quite what it says. “Don’t bear false witness against your neighbor,” we’re told. Which feels to me much more like a (super important) requirement for having-neighbors-and-not-killing-each-other (aka living with other humans) than it does an abstract virtue. Verily, this is the Good and Practical Book.

If you’d like to join in… this is the place for comments and commentary on Yitro (Exodus 18.1 – 20.23)

Next up: Mishpatim (Exodus 21.1 – 24.18)
-Cecil