Welcome to Week 7 and our slick new server. Hopefully we’ll have a smoother ride from here on out. I’m about 20 pages behind right now, still enjoying the ride.
On the thread, it’s clear that some folks are falling a little out of love with AtD. Me, I find that when I’m reading it, the love is still there. It helps that I’m a Merle Rideout fan, so I was delighted to see his return. Still, when I’m not reading it, it doesn’t linger in the brain or call to me from wherever I dropped it last. So the trick is mostly getting myself to pick the book back up.
I do keep puzzling over these racial/ethnic stereotypes. More than anything it feels like Pynchon’s just screwing with us — trying to get a rise out of his readership. He’s got my buttons pretty well configured so far. For example, every time he says the word “invisible” I twitch. Likewise for “explosion.”
On the pro/anti-Traverse(seses) debate, I’m with Andy and Cap’n M. in that they’ve started to really grow on me. They’re certainly the most human characters in this crowd.
A few random questions: Anybody have a clear sense of what year we’re in now? How old Dally is? What was in that tunnel with Dally and Frank? Mebbe these all become clear in the last 20 pages of the week’s reading, but if not, and if you have a theory, shout out.
In other news, Steve Evans has once again come through with helpful notes on last week’s reading.
Tuesday 3/20: A good chance for folks to catch up, as we’ll be doing a relatively short week. Let’s meet at the bottom of page 373, where “we’re already ghosts.”
(which is to say: please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 373. Aim to get near that target and add a comment by end o’ day next Monday)
Pugnax!
-Cecil
"…something like the supervisor of an entire team of political agents…"
I believe that what was in the tunnel with Dally and Frank was tommyknockers, who are apparently scary little people of some kind.
Quoth Wikipedia:
“The Tommyknockers is a 1987 horror novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is more of an excursion into the realm of science fiction for King, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.
“In his autobiography, On Writing, King attributes the basic premise to the short story ‘The Colour out of Space’ by H.P. Lovecraft. The book takes its title from an old children’s rhyme:
“Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers, knocking at the door.
I want to go out, don’t know if I can,
‘Cause I’m so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.”
I am still mostly loving this book–marveling, at least, at its breadth and virtuosity–while still vaguely annoyed with it. Maybe because it really demands to be read in a cabin somewhere far away from all the distractions of modern life. It is uniquely unsuited, for instance, for reading in a room where “The Next Doll” is playing on the TV.
I am very much pro-Traverse clan. They are among the most fully developed of Pynchon characters in any of his books. Like so many of us, they are trying to act on something big and important and finding that life so often interferes with our plans for our lives. And like so many of us, each has the chance to be strong and virtuous, and each has the chance to be flawed and real.
I’m writing this at the office, and sadly didn’t tote my tome with me, but I’m with everyone who loves the Traverses, despite (or perhaps because of) their oddballness. And of course, I’m lovin’ Dally, who I’ve decided is a distant relative of the Traverses. (Cecil: I’m putting her at the same age as Edwarda Beef.) Dally, after all, isn’t interested in anyone with “a head full of magnets.” (sic–I’m not sure that’s the exact quote). On more than one occasion, I’ve felt like my head was full of magnets, and even more often, like everyone around me had heads full of magnets. My beloved brother used to call these selfsame people “CaCa Craniums.”
I’m also fascinated by the Japanese trade delegation and their luminous Kodaks. What with all the anachronisms that Pynchon is using, I was half-expecting them to be texting and shooting each other with their Blackberries.
Speaking of anachronisms, am I just totally out of it, or do any other readers feel like time travelers in this book?
Although he’s not there yet, I think Kit is likely to be as fleshed-out as the Rideouts. Sending Dally and Kit both to Europe can’t be a coincidence, and we’ve been inside Kit’s head as much as we have been inside Dally’s.
As if I didn’t have enough weirdness in my literary life, I actually have *three* books underway right now (me, who almost never has more than one). My son asked me to start reading _Eregon_ to him a couple of weeks ago. It’s perfect bedtime reading for him: the chapters are short, the writing is right at his aural comprehension level–and he’s highly motivated when dragons are involved.
And with the gift card he gave me for my birthday, I got Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, which Cecil had encouraged me to read way too many years ago to recall. I couldn’t resist tasting a chapter or two to see what it was like, and now I find that I’m close to the end of the first book after less than a week.
Pullman’s story is fantasy (daemons and witches and talking bears) but with a strong flavor of plain-ol anachronism, mixing internal-combustion engines with Victorian night watchmen with the Inquisition. And when the young female protagonist talks her way through or around folks, I’m hearing Dally’s voice. Silvertongued girls surviving in worlds where the mechanics don’t work quite the way I’m used to.
Is there a growing consensus that this book isn’t really about anything? That better sums up what I was trying to say last week about characters’ motives. It’s not so much why characters act the way they do as why anything happens at all. Of course, one could see parallels to this in real life, were one feeling charitable.
The book is lots of fun to read while still vaguely annoying, as Bill said earlier. I can’t decide how I feel about that.
Love the Yellow Peril Crime Tour.
Be careful what you wish for. Here I was grousing about the Traverse arc stretching on a little long, and Pynchon goes channelsurfing—Dally joins the circus, Reef warps into one of the all-time great Pynchon names (Thrapston Cheesely III) and hits the Big Easy, & (I think I’m a little ahead, but it’s just on the horizon) Frank zonks with Artaud’s favorite indigenous tribe in ol’ Mejico.
Each fun in its way, and if I were Pynchon’s editor I’d be hard-pressed to say where to cut. But I miss the density of reference we had early on, when the Chums and Lew were more prominent in the mix, with electricity and ore and Anarchism and aether all promising to gather into some sinister thread for the narrative sparkles to hang from. I got the distinct feeling in this stretch that Pynchon was changing scenes fast & furious just because he can, like some flashy piece of stagecraft in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Or maybe because it’s just fun. Which it is, just…I sort of miss Chicago c. 1893.
Still love the book, but increasingly on the immediate tactical level: this sentence, that subcharacter. The wide-angle strategic stuff—how the scene adds to what’s come before and whets your appetite for what might be on the way—I’m sort of losing faith with right now. Sure, the Iceland spar’s still there, and the idea of doubling, and there’s a chance that all these characters will turn out to be the doubles of some other set later in the novel and I’ll look like a fool for having wavered. Right now though I’m where most of the characters are: unmoored from my past, in a fog about the future, and only dimly aware of how to move forward. And maybe that’s exactly where the wily author wants me.
rodney k–i’m way behind on this march so i can’t comment on the place you’re at, but your observations remind me of a moment we hit with gravity’s rainbow where the air got thin, the characters themselves seemed confused about their motivations, and we were concerned that our fearless author might have lost control of the thing. who knows if it’ll all come together again, but i remember getting through that stretch and being happy again.
even as far behind as i am, i can say that i also find the main pleasure for me is in the specifics, the clusters of beautiful words and the minute observations that sum up a character; i’m not aware of the giant moving parts out there in the mists (and not sure if that’s a good thing or not!).
I’m with e, and with cecil – though further behind. I love the Chums, get nervous each time a new tangent opens that I’ll get lost and not find my way back, not always sure what back really is.
In strikes me that there’s something very unitarian/universalist about pynchon’s point of view, that everyone has a story worth hearing and with that, every tangent is worth exploring. I’m not sure I always agree, once I’ve heard the story, that it was worth it, but it does sort of create the illusion of walking thru life with ESP and being able to pick up the transmissions from each passing random character.
So, that’s how I’m reading it for now, back in the mid-hundreds (late start).
“we’re already ghosts” a nice place to end. i’m not exactly slogging thru but just devoid of history each time i pick up the book, and too unconcerned with the history to go back and figure out if this person has popped up before. well, maybe not that indifferent, i am the curious type. and i’m not saying i’m not enjoying the ride in this anarchistic book (if only). i wanted to react a bit to last week’s talk about how pynchon suffuses various racisms, and this week i’m wanting to take a different angle. i mean i’ve gotten from being a little curious as to what he’s getting at to feeling like i’m being bombarded. there is an attempt at an inundation with culture, even down to the narration which seems to try to take different flavors depending on location. and with so many locations now what would be their significances, if anything besides just the bombardment, the somewhat interconnected ambling and rambling. some basic stuff: i have to admit i still enjoy the each new name that crops up, ruperta chirpingdon-groin being a most recent fave. i swear i’m still not feeling it in colorado much, i get excited every exit from that state. maybe that’s because everyone sounds like people i grew up around, and that was arkansas. i dunno. and by the way, this is a fun place to plow thru a book. thanks, cecil (and thanks rodney for mentioning it on your blog). and steve, your tidbits are exactly the sort of thing i’m jotting down, or attempting to – it’ll be interesting to compare later.
Like many – I get a little lost with each closing and reopening fo the book. But that has been my experience with almost every Pynchon novel the first time through.
About nothing? Well, in terms of a directed plot, maybe not. In terms of major themes, it seems to be about a theme common to TRP and the transition from 19th to 20th century – limitations & possibilities. The frontier myth still seems to be part of the AMerican landscape, but the frontier has closed. The utopian impulse informs human understanding, but monopolistic robber barons rule the economy. Scientific progress and new inventions are everywhere, but much of that advancement will culminate in the most efficient killing machines ever seen. And while Darwin & Nietzsche are reorganizing the view of religion, the need to believe in something greater than ourselves is everywhere. Notice how some of this is reflected in the Traverse’s diversity being brought into alignment by the death of their father who was a divisive family figure or Dally going to NYC to expand possibilities only to find the missing center of her family – her mother. And like most villainous forces in Pynchon, Vibe tries to seize greater control only to have more under his banner, but less control over any particular thing.
I like the Chutes & Ladders analogy, sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t but i have a sick fascination to continue anyway.
Debra
on track. feel like i’m reading an all out western at this point. still loving all the references to tesla. i wish i was tesla.
Grateful for the shorter stretch, and delighted by both chapters.
I know he’s constantly reminding us, not always so subtly, that this is a book about class war, but listening in on the anarchist jazz players between sets it really dawned on me: wow, this whole damn contraption is animated by that struggle, all the bits and pieces are caught up in its current. Call it a glimpse of the totality on the part of a reader usually too absorbed in the brilliant, small-scale patterning to notice other things.
Oh, and I’m a little embarrassed to tell everyone, but I think I’m smitten with Dally. Couldn’t bode well….
S.
Pynchon’s threatening ‘psittacide’ on the mouthy parrot made me actually laugh myself out of my usual state of mild amusement/bewilderment/irritation. He’s clever, y’know, and that’s big, right? Right. Exactly. So like many others, I’m trying different ways to tackle the fact that the meandering through the lives of whoever in whatever town sometimes feels like it might go on forever (and it will because we, equally clever people, can see the writing over some 700 more pages). And that when you close the book, you get amnesia. And when you open it back up, you still have amnesia.
But, so what? Intellectually, I hate closure. I find it smarmy and provincial. Here is the opposite position, taken far down the road. No big endings on anyone (even if they die, their story keeps going), but just a door shut or that town left. Close the book. Open the book. New town, new people, sometimes old people. 50 odd pages, and bang! DONE! Forget about it entirely, relish your quotidian life, and then, a few days later, open book. Who? What? Huh? It’s refreshing. So that’s my new take.
So I do relish the details and the names like the rest of you. And I love it when I can go look up a new word that’s really a word (happens sometimes). Don’t like that I have to sit at the table to read because the damn book’s so heavy and I still feel like I want to be able to look up words–if I read on the bus, I feel like I’m missing something. (Surely I’ll get over this in another couple of hundred pages.) I do keep looking for meaning woven through, and I thank Dr. Vitz for the lesson on limitation and possibility, which fits just fine for me.
In reading everyone’s comments, I find I either agree with whats been said, or learn something new. Thanks. I see these big ideas floating around in the book, and I try to make sense of them. A lot of it seems to relate to impermanence – times are changing, technology develops, relationships are in flux, things are not what they seem, a number of veil references, everyone is moving around a lot yet somehow manage to link up to one another like a Seinfeld episode.
I struggle, but Im enjoying a number of vivid and funny turns of phrases, and I feel somewhat grounded in the class struggle pieces and the relationships. Those are easier to understand for me.
I agree with Andy Berg that the book really isn’t about anything, plot-wise. And even the broad themes are meandering and kinda half-hearted. It is fun, and a fun read. But without something meaty to sink my teeth into, I’m not drawn back to the story or the book.
This week, for example, I haven’t read a page (I can still see the dust from you other marchers when I squint into the sun) and I really don’t miss it. Cecil commented about the need to get himself to pick the book up again. I know what he was talking about…though I do miss the Chums.
in by the skin of my chinny chin chin. last week possibly
Chris, hang in there. It’s the nature of Deathmarches to feel impossible. It’s OK to read a few fewer pages if you need to, but keep reading, keep posting. Post your frustration, if you feel that.