Pynchon Watch Y2K6: Of literary hangovers and harsh morning light

Something isn't just quite how you planned
Something isn't just like it ever seemed
This is not what you had planned

- The Wrens

So. So, yeah. So. Nothing appeals right now.

Not since I finished Gravity's Rainbow. Which, yes, I don't know if I've made it clear or not, but I enjoyed it. A lot. I still don't know what to say about it. Well, rather: I have billions of things to say. Very unorganized things. No idea where to start.

I would like to safely say that it's a shame the book is so pitched as obscure and/or difficult and/or academic, because really, it's not that hard to enjoy it. I'd like to say that, but I'm not ready to defend that assertion, so I'll just imply it, for now. Then if you take it as gospel and you try to construct a logical chain of actions based on it and the whole thing blows up in your face, and you then try to sue me for misrepresentation, I can say I never did say anything.

What I will say is that nothing has felt correct since I finished it, literarily speaking. I was in this one headspace for almost four weeks, a positively apocryphal time span in litblogger terms. Never mind that a Pynchonian headspace is particularly consuming and persuasive. Now I find myself trying to climb free, and it's like, yech. What, you want me to consider spending my time in some paltry headspace? Up until a couple hours ago, I couldn't see a way out, nor could I see that I wanted to see a way out.

Digression!

Did I mention that I was listening to pretty much nothing but Autechre for the last two weeks of Gravity's Rainbow? There's a fun musical headspace to be stuck in. And by fun I mean, appropriate, yeah, in a Let's Trip Merrily Down The Dark Paths Of The Most Internal Mind way. Not so much fun in a Wish They Could All Be California Girls Because I Sure Do Love Puppies And Sunshine sense. I hit the last page of the book and the queued-up Autechre played on and I sat there staring off into space for like ten minutes before I looked into the nearest reflective surface and asked myself what the hell I was doing.

Then I think I got up and made a fairly, but not completely, soul-redeeming peanut butter sandwich. That was nice.

At least it's been relatively easy to shake my way free of Autechre. I've been taking liberal doses of the latest Cardigans album, followed by frequent Stretch Princess chasers, all mixed in a frothy brew of Sonic Nurse & Rather Ripped Sonic Youth. Oh, girl-fronted rock bands, do I love you. For sure: pop music has never, ever sounded this good.

End digression!

I tried to transition this weekend, I really did. I read two graphic novels and then I read a Stephen Dixon book, but, just. Eh. The graphic novels were nice enough but not in a revelatory way. I didn't become a "graphic novel guy" because of them. And the Dixon is Dixon but to be honest it all felt too familiar, like I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't have other stuff of his sort of fresh in my brain, and it just didn't have the medicinal effect I'd turned to it for, and so just bleah meh feh, farghle schfump klahhhhhhhhhh.

Here's the problem: I'm hung over. On flubber-bloody Pynchon, of all things, and you know what I want? What I really really want? Well, I'll tell you what I really, really want, is some more damn Pynchon. Yes, hair of the dog, literary style. Except, folklore be damned, you know that's not how things work. You can take more of what messed you up, but it won't accomplish anything. All you're doing is masking the fact that you're tired and dehydrated and you don't remember huge chunks of the previous night.

Or, in my case, the last 26 or so nights.

So while I'm looking for my next book, my brain finding reasons to reject everything on the TBR pile (too involved, not involved enough, too long, too short, too trashy, not trashy enough, too Delillo), my eyes keep drifting back up to Vineland and Mason & Dixon, and my brain has to stop making up sorry-ass excuses long enough to slap my eyes back into place. Smack, smack! my brain keeps saying. And still, the eyes, they wander.

Such was my situation when I hit the bookstore to grab a copy of Against the Day. (It's this new book he wrote, came out today, you might have heard something about it on the internets [see chart below].) Carrying it out of the store and into my car, the heft of it in my hand, the reality of it, my being here and conscious of such a momentous release--I could feel my resolve start to crumble. Maybe I'd stop fighting it, I thought. Maybe I'd trade in my sensible "read the next three novels in a year's time" plan for the far more rock 'n roll "read the next three novels RIGHT THE FUCK NOW ARGH GASP PHTFTHTT" plan. Maybe it's not crazy of me to suspect that sometimes, the whole bottle really is better than a single reasonably full glass.

I enlisted a fellow building resident to help me carry the thing up the stairs and into my apartment, where I quickly built a custom heavy-duty book stand on which it could lie and near which visitors could light votive candles. I set the book in place, opened it, skimmed the first couple paragraphs, and then immediately slammed it shut and torched it with an emergency flame thrower before leaping to the TBR pile to grab the first non-Pynchon book I touched.

Drastic, you say? Aye. But, you see, in there, in Against the Day? There's a character in there named Darby Suckling. And, bloodshot-eyed or not, I know damn well there's no way I'm ready for my life to be that Pynchonesque.


English posts that contain "against The Day" per day for the last 30 days.

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