How "Vineland" Came to an End...

... and what a melancholic mood I managed myself to get into because of my recent reading pace! It literally took me nearly a month to finish the book. Just like Nabokov's "Glory" before it, Pynchon's "Vineland" was a never-ending series of false starts. I don't blame the book. "Vineland" is quintessentially Pynchon at his best: surreal to extremes, leading into the dark side with a smile on his face, etc. That's his natural way of weaving a story. There are, I suspect, some influences from "Magic Realism" here and on his other works. It is difficult to pin-point, but the last part of the book reveals characters named in that Pynchonesque absurd way that makes us stop for just a fraction of a second and try to see the symbolism behind the name. Again, that is what he is good at--perfectly good at--and after reading "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Slow Learner," I realize I had no one else to blame but myself for any short comings on the reading.
So, I have decided to cheat the system the last couple of days in order to catch up with my reading. I have proctored no exams this past week, even though there's a pile a mile high on my desk, and I have done the bare minimum of preparation (most was done over the summer anyways). The thing I did, have done and will continue to do is read, strongly into the weekend. Presently, I am reading from my reading list for 2007, trying until the very last day to complete it. I still have some volumes but now that I am over the hump with "Vineland" I think I can complete it. I am reading Maureen Corrigan's "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!" You might recognize the name because she is the book reviewer for "Fresh Air" on National Public Radio. I recognize the name because she is an English professor at my alma mater, and even though I never took a class with her she was always pleasant to me. Her door leading into the main hall of the English Department was always lined with books sent by publishers, most of which were not going to be read and she would place them there for students to have them. I have still several of those books in my collection. She is a lovely reader. The books is a magnificent piece of evidence that those of us who (as she says, "rather spend time with a book than with a loved one) read voraciously lead a life of intense pleasure and quizzical madness. I am actually taking notes from her book to add to my reading list for next year: "The Classics of the Western Canon" reading list for 2008. She is knowledgeable not because she is a highly regarded critic, but rather because she is the epitome of what readers should be. I love the way she writes and the connections she makes. If you are like me (I tend to buy books about people who read a lot in order to justify my own "madness"), then you need to read this book as soon as possible. What a gem!

Thomas Pynchon's "Vineland"

My lack of time accounts for not having written anything in the month of September. My courses are keeping me extremely busy, and leave me with little or no time to read. It took me nearly a month to finish Nabokov's "Glory," and I am worst off with Pynchon's "Vineland." The novel begins with Zoyd Wheeler, a drop out hippie, last generation of tuned out people living away from the Nixonian Regime. But like every Pynchon novel, "Vineland" turns surreal before you can say "recluse writer," and trying to keep up with the appeareance of ridiculously named characters is enough to keep one entertained and occupied. I mean to say that it is, in many ways, an interesting and well-written novel. I like it and I wish I could actually have more time to devote to it. Here's a passage I thought particularly well-written:



"At some point he must have gone drifting off to sleep, and she hadn't noticed. She watched over him, hers for a while, allowing presence, his beauty, the fear at the base of her spine, the prurient ache in her hands.... at last, so swept and helpless, she leaned in to whisper to him her heart's overflow, and saw in the half-light that what she'd thought were closed eyelids had been open all the time. He'd been watching her. She let out a short jolted scream. Brock started laughing."



Pynchon is a master of the surreal, of that which they call Magic-Realism in Latin American literature of the Boom. I recognize some of the major influences, incredibly so Faulkner is included here. The novel turns into a cloak-and-dagger thing of sorts with all kinds of agents and double-agents raiding and driving the plot of the novel in continuos changes of persona. It is hard to believe I have been struggling with this novel for so long and I still have over 100 pages to go. Again, it is sad I haven't posted much since school began.



I think my book list for the year has been shot. With only a few months to go I still have over ten books to read and at this pace I don't think I will be able to finish. That will be the first time I haven't been able to do so since 2005. Next year I am doing a full-year reading of Classics I have not yet read. There's a lot of Austen and Bronte I need to read, as well as more from antiquity and Dickens. Writing on the blog feels great again. I intend to make my rounds to my friends' blogs in the not so distant future.

Book Loyalty...

There seems to be a pervasive tendency to finish book one doesn't enjoy. At least in my case, that is. I had to finish Thomas Pynchon's "Slow Learner," I just had to. I finally reached the end today, after a week and a half (or more) of struggling to make sense of those stories. The last one in particular was a tough one. The Secret Integration finally makes sense in the end. A group of youngsters plan "maneuvers" against the adult world. These are little pranks that never materialize but the boys find it fun to actually plan them with great military jargon. The "integration" of the story plays on two different levels. On the one end, the integration is explained as a calculus problem: "'The opposite of differentiation,'" Grover said, drawing an x-axis, y-axis and curve on his greenboard. 'Call this function of x. Consider the values of the curve at tiny little increments of x..." The reality of the story's idea of integration is different though. It deals with racial integration and the boys are just too young to understand. A black family moves into their neighborhood and the adults are up in arms about it. The boys befriend the black family's kid, Carl. At the end of the story, the reader is presented with this... Carl is not real, it is simply an imaginary friend the boys have made up. I know... confusing, no? But the loyalty I had with this book made me finish it and I feel all the better for it.

Next is Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." I am writing a little at a time. I am not writing with any sense of direction. I am just writing. The title of the piece came up on its own: "The Song of Darkness." And I am writing just a little at a time; loose sentences that appear to have no reason for being other than that of ink on a paper. But it is taking shape and I need all the fuel I can get... that's why I am re-reading Rilke.

My 100th and Why Pynchon is so Hard...

This is my 100th post. I wish I had better things to discuss, but the truth of the matter is that I have had a terrible time trying to finish Pynchon. Right now, the last story "The Secret Integration" is possibly the most dense short story I have ever read (and that's counting all my graduate seminars on the Modern British authors). Thomas Pynchon is an enigma and his writing shows why. I have no doubt that they are filled with genius; perhaps that is the reason why I don't quite understand them. "The Secret Integration" is a story about a group of boys planning some operation. One of them, the leader, is the most intelligent of the bunch and carries most of the dialogue. One thing I do have to say about Pynchon: he can write a nice dialogue. I remember reading "The Crying of Lot 49" in graduate school and half-expected these stories to fill the gap of what I might have not understood in his previous works. I have failed at understanding the most basic premises of these short stories. Pynchon is candid in the introduction to the collection and relates how these stories were the efforts of a beginner and therefore (he deems) lack something. I doubt it is the stories or their structure that make them so difficult to read. Again, there's some genius in them that make them rather unapproachable. Here's someone's effort to decipher the story. I don't buy the explanation though.

It's been a difficult couple of weeks, hence my lack of posting. School has been busy with many papers and tests to grade. The students are fine, and we do have a good time in the classroom. I feel very tired when I get home but happy that I have given it all in the classroom. Let's see... right now we are reading "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" by Stephen Crane. It's a good example of Crane's most mature work, as his talent was considerably lacking in his early efforts (all the critics agree). "Maggie" is the story of a girl growing up in the Bowery section of New York at the turn of the century. She lives in a tenement. The extreme conditions of poverty, alcoholism, sweatshop work all lead Maggie into a life of prostitution by the end of the story. It is a sad examination at the cost of human life during the great migration at the end of the century. The girls are enjoying the read, but they feel it is kind of depressing. They are used to happy endings, I guess.

I have gotten some really good volumes lately but I doubt it I will be able to press them into my year list. I might adapt some of them as substitutions.

Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner

This is a rare collection of short stories by this eccentric writer. The introduction to the stories proves to be a rare semi-autobiography by the secluded artist. Pynchon evokes a time in his life when he was just starting to write, and how he gave in to the many pretentious habits of the starting artist. He explains how he would go to the thesaurus to find a word that sounded good rather than just looking for the right word. The stories in this collection show him as a natural writer, a beginner with a great sense of where he was going with his talent. The stories are not so much surreal. I have to say that the story "Under the Rose" completely lost me; even after I finished reading it I had little idea of what the story tried to convey. I do, however, recommend this volume for anyone familiar with Pynchon's work or someone simply starting out.

Work has been very busy lately. I haven't been able to post every day due to this. I will try and read Rilke next so as to have more to say. I barely commented on Jung, I know, and it makes me feel bad. Cheers.

Lost in Place..

Nothing really happened since my last post.... NOT! I actually finished "Drown," Carl Jung's "The Undiscovered Self," and also finished "The Elsewhere Community" by Hugh Kenner.... I am more than half way through Thomas Pynchon's "Slow Learner: Early Stories." So I have been reading faster than I can post them. I will review Pynchon's completely as soon as I am done reading it.

Work has been busy and that has also affected the fact that I haven't posted in a while. Nevertheless, I am back and reading at a great pace. Cheers.