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The Stop
Born in Glen Cove, Long Island in 1937, Thomas Pynchon is an American novelist and occasional short story and essay writer whose dense and complex works combine black humour, fantasy, history, mathematics, science, and pop culture with different genres and themes to depict ‘human alienation in the chaos of modern society.’ As a child, Pynchon was a ‘voracious reader and precocious writer.’ Graduating from high school at 16, he entered Cornell University to study engineering before leaving at the end of his sophomore year to enlist in the US Navy. In 1957, he returned to Cornell to study English, studied under Vladimir Nabokov1 and became close friends with Richard Fariña.2 Notoriously reclusive, few photographs of him exist, and he has avoided reporters and interviewers for the entirety of his career.3
Pynchon’s debut novel was V. (1963), a convoluted but relatively straightforward ‘whimsical, cynically absurd tale of a middle-aged Englishman’ named Herbert Stencil’s search for ‘V.’ – a mysterious entity he finds referenced in his diplomat/spy father’s diary and who appears in various guises throughout critical periods in European history. Alternating Stencil’s story with another involving a discharged US Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his sidekick Pig Bodine and a group of pseudo-Bohemians known as the Whole Sick Crew, the novel revealed Pynchon’s fondness for complex absurdity while nevertheless stitching together (most) of the disparate threads of the various plots4 to reach a resolution. Nominated for a National Book Award, V. won the Faulkner Foundation Award for that year.
V. was followed by The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), an uncharacteristically short novel5 in which Pynchon condemns ‘modern industrialisation’ through the strange adventures of Oedipa Maas. Receiving a letter informing her that she is the executrix of her former lover’s estate, Oedipa’s attempt to execute her duty leads her to into a conspiracy theory linked to a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution services: Tristero and the (real-life) Thurn and Taxis.6 Though it received mixed reviews upon publication, the subsequent income allowed Pynchon to move to Manhattan Beach, California, where he wrote a ‘tour de force in 20th-century literature,’ Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Concerned with ‘exploring the dilemmas of human beings in the modern world,’ the novel – set in a part of post-World War II Germany called ‘the Zone’ – loosely focusses on Tyrone Slothrop, an American soldier who (among many very odd characters) is searching for a secret V-2 rocket rumoured to be capable of breaking Earth’s gravitational barrier. Filled with ‘descriptions of obsessive and paranoid fantasies, ridiculous and grotesque imagery, and esoteric mathematical and scientific language,’ Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award but so split the Pulitzer Prize judges they decided not to make any award that year.7
For the next 17 years, Pynchon published no further novels, though there were rumours of author sightings and theories about his research for new projects.8 In 1990 Pynchon published Vineland, a work that – though less sprawling than its predecessor - nevertheless covers an enormous amount of ground. Set in 1984, the year of Reagan’s re-election, Vineland is putatively the story of Zoyd Wheeler and his 14-year-old daughter Prairie who are thrown out of their house by federal agent Brock Vond. On the hunt for Prairie’s mother - a former lover he’d turned informant at the height of the hippy era - Bond’s chase meanders through a plot thick with militant film makers, television-addicts, a breakaway country in California called the People’s Republic of Rock and Roll, female ninjas, a Godzilla attack, astrologers, Thanatoids (victims of karmic imbalance), and countless musical interludes and Star Trek references.9
In 1997, Pynchon published Mason & Dixon, one of the most ambitious novels of the 20th century. Set in the 18th century and written in a style based on the English of the time, the novel is a tall tale version of the lives of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon - of the Mason and Dixon Line fame. As told by the Rev. Wickes Cherrycoke, the plot traces their story from London to Cape Town, St Helena and eventually to the American colonies. On the way they meet all sorts of characters - real and imaginary - including the ancestor of Pig Bodine (from V.), Nevil Maskeylne,10 undercover Jesuit spies, the Learnèd English Dog, an intense version of Vaucanson’s Mechanical Duck,11 Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington (with whom they enjoy the General’s hemp crop) – all of whom are navigating the various hostilities (England v France, Colonists v Native Americans) which defined pre-Revolutionary America - while also dealing with issues as varied as astronomy, the Gregorian calendar, mathematics, feng shui, the transit of Venus, pizza, caffeine, cheese rolling and strange subterranean tunnels under the English city of Durham.12
Against the Day (2006) is another epic historical novel with a byzantine plot that takes place between the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the years just after World War I. Linked by the Chums of Chance – a group of five cheerful young balloonists aboard the sky-ship Inconvenience who drop into the story at various points and appear to have the ability to time travel - over a hundred characters spread out all over the world interact in a loosely-plotted, dead-end-filled adventure written in a variety of styles which mimic popular fiction styles in the period of its setting. Relatively quick for Pynchon, Inherent Vice - ‘Pynchon’s rambling take on the detective novel’ - followed in 2009,13 and Bleeding Edge in 2013. This novel - as of now, Pynchon’s last - concerns the efforts of Maxine Tarnow - former-certified-accountant-turned-fraud-investigator - to ‘untangle the nefarious doings of a New York computer-security firm in the year before the September 11, 2001 attacks.’ All while attempting to parent her sons – Otis and Ziggy – in the aftermath of domestic difficulties of her own.
Phew.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a remarkable documentary (18:36) from The New Yorker about Eddy Goldfarb, the inventor of over 800 iconic toys - including the bubble gun, chattering teeth, Kerplunk, various Lego sets, countless games and even the off-road Stomper cars. He’s also had a very interesting life and - when it was filmed - was a month from his 98th birthday and still inventing.
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is the only film adaptation of a Pynchon book, Inherent Vice (2014). Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson14 and starring Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wison, Reese Witherspoon, Benicia del Toro, and Martin Short, Inherent Vice is a neo-noir mystery comedy film set in early 1970s Los Angeles. Phoenix plays Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello, a stoner/hippie/private investigator who inadvertently gets embroiled in the LA underworld while investigating a series of interrelated cases connected to the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend and her new wealthy boyfriend. The convoluted, often opaque plot was criticised by some as too complicated - but, then again, it is Pynchon. With a soundtrack by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, it’s an excellent work that rewards (and requires) several viewings.
Inherent Vice streams on multiple platforms.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a selection of tracks from the Inherent Vice soundtrack,15 which work perfectly together: ‘Here Comes the Ho-Dads’ (The Marketts, 1963), ‘Any Day Now’ (Chuck Jackson, 1962), ‘Journey Through the Past’ (Neil Young, 1972), ‘Sukiyaki’ (Kyu Sakamoto, 1962) and ‘Les Fleurs’ (Minnie Riperton, 1969). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought (which sits framed on my desk in my office) is a reply from Pynchon when told that some critics were complaining his first novel - the amazing, but very complicated V. - was ‘too difficult:’
‘Why should things be easy to understand?’
Indeed. Sometimes simplicity is just … boring.
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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The Russian-born novelist of, among others, Lolita. For more information, see: Nabokov (Britannica).
Fariña - songwriter, poet, folksinger and novelist of Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966) - died at 28 in a motorcycle accident in Carmel, California. Pynchon dedicated Gravity’s Rainbow to him.
That said, he does exist in public. He lives in NYC, is married to Melanie Jackson, his agent, and has a son who he walked to school and presumably did all the parent/teacher/school things with when the boy was young. He also appears twice on The Simpsons as himself - albeit with a paper bag over his head to conceal his identity. I’ve been a fan of Pynchon since grad school, my first foray into his world being Vineland. Reading him isn’t easy - it’s not meant to be - but it’s worth the work. The subheading for today’s Issue is a paraphrase of an early Pynchon comment about his readers: ‘Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.’ Sources for today’s Stop include Pynchon (The Modern Word/Shipwreck Library), Thomas Pynchon (Britannica) and Thomas Pynchon.
Some of these plots include rhinoplasty, the German occupation of South West Africa (now Namibia) and the resultant Herero Wars, jazz musicians, synthetic humanoids, Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus, mercenary street gangs, alligator hunting in the Manhattan sewers, the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a priest who preaches and ministers to a congregation of rats, and a ship-sinking waterspout off of the coast of Malta.
It’s length is the primary reason it’s considered a good gateway into Pynchon’s work, but I’d suggest Vineland as a starting point.
Along with numerous references to the culture in which it was written – e.g., The Beatle and their contemporary imitators, LSD, Nabokov, psychotherapy and late-60s paranoia – the novel also includes a (fictitious) Jacobean revenge tragedy that convinces Oedipa of the truth of the conspiracy.
Though the Pulitzer Prize jury selected it as the winner, some members of the Pulitzer Advisory Board were offended by its content, describing it as ‘unreadable,’ ‘turgid,’ ‘overwritten’ and in parts ‘obscene.’
Along with rumours that he was the Unabomber, that he didn’t actually exist but was actually a collective of authors, and even that he was J. D. Salinger. None of which was true.
Including an inspired sitcom called Say, Jim about a starship in which all the officers ‘were black except for the Communications Officer, a freckled white redhead named Lieutenant O’Hara.’
Like most of Pynchon’s work, it’s impossible to give a plot summary – you have to read it for yourself. By the way, Mason & Dixon was an early Bus Recommendation (as it’s connected to cheese rolling): Issue 1.9 ‘The Coopers Hill Cheese Roll.’
Inherent Vice is today’s Recommendation - a brief synopsis is found there.
Anderson is the director of Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), There Will Be Blood (2007) and the recent Licorice Pizza (2021) among others.
Which also contains CAN’s brilliant track ‘Vitamin C’ - it’s in the playlist for The Bus ‘Guinea Pigs’ (Vol. 1; Issue 20 - 13 June 2022).
PTA's Inherent Vice script should have won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. It took me reading the novel, then watching the film multiple times, then listening to the audiobook to understand Pynchon's work.
Love Gravity’s Rainbow! I took its whole approach to the world as a dare to write something highly unconventional in grad school, and when the prof handed us back our papers he asked me to stay after class. “Tom,” he said, “what the hell is this?” “I thought Pynchon’s book basically required that I escape the bounds of the conventional academic paper, so I took a shot at doing something different,” I replied. “Well, I can’t accept it,” he replied, “I need you to produce a ‘coin of the realm.’” I won’t belabor the point; I wrote a conventional paper. But man, what a novel!