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Friday, August 28th, 2009
When we took the ferry out to Provincetown on Tuesday, among other fun things (Provincetown had me thoroughly charmed -- it seems like about the nicest beach town/resort town I can imagine, I am searching my brain for ways to make my future include living there some day...), we found Tim's Used Books -- funky little shop with a really interesting selection. We were in a hurry and on our bikes; under different circumstances I would have spent a few hours there and come away with a heavy bag of books. Other vacationing news... Sylvia and I went to sea yesterday afternoon on a whale-watching ship, we saw many humpback whales and a few minkes. Got some nice photos, I'll post them when we get back home. It was a beautiful day for it. (Weather has been really nice this week, though it looks like a stormy weekend.) I've been taking some moderately long bike rides around the countryside here, to places like Hingham and Hull; this afternoon I will try for Duxbury and Marshfield. Martha is coming over for dinner this evening.
posted morning of August 28th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Another unexpected discovery from Deedee's bookshelf is Alice Munro's Selected Stories -- I haven't really heard or read much about this author before but she's really got my ear after a couple of stories. A really distinctive, fully human narrative voice, that reminds me of a lot of different contemporary authors without being any of them.
posted evening of August 27th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, August 24th, 2009
Hardship lives in me. What I suffer is myslf that outraces the water or the wind. But that it only should be mine, cuts deep. It is the half only. And it takes it out of my taste that the choice is theirs. I have the rough of it not because I will it, but because it is all that is left, a remnant from their coatcloth. This is the gall on the meat. Let the hail beat me. It is a kind of joy I feel in such things.
Eric the Red is the first character from American History to appear in Williams' In the American Grain -- its first chapter is pieces of narrative taken (as near as I can tell) from The Saga of Eric the Red and Voyage of Freydis, Helgi and Finnbogi with an internal look at the actors' motivations that is Williams' invention -- it is a little hard to know how to classify this writing but for now I am going with "historical fiction"...
posted evening of August 24th, 2009: Respond
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Here in Scituate, MA we are staying at our friends' Deedee and Paul's beautiful house -- they are vacationing in Maine this week and lent us their place. This is the best way to travel, I think -- for cheapskate-related reasons and personal comfort, I would much rather be in a house and making our own meals... In addition to having a lovely house, Deedee and Paul have a great library, full of books that I'm not expecting -- I did not bring along any reading material for the week, just browsing through their shelves. Two wonderful finds so far: Brooklyn Is: Southwest of the Island, by James Agee; and In the American Grain by W.C. Williams. Brooklyn Is is an essay about the borough that Agee wrote for Fortune magazine in 1939 -- they would not publish it and it was not printed until 1968. I love the descriptions of physical Brooklyn -- I can recognize much of it 70 years on -- and there are some hilarious notes about the people Agee meets in different neighborhoods. I'm reading Fordham U. Press's edition of the essay from 2005, which has a worthwhile introduction by Jonathan Lethem. In the American Grain is completely unexpected -- I do not really know much of anything about Williams besides some of his poetry, he was apparently also a deeply perceptive amateur historian. This book (published in 1925) consists of short prose pieces that examine figures in American history and the history of European colonization of the Americas -- in his foreword Williams says he has "sought to re-name the things seen, now lost in chaos of borrowed titles, many of them inappropriate, under which the true character lies hid." Some fantastic prose -- it presupposes familiarity with some source texts which I am lacking -- making me wish he had included a bibliography!
posted morning of August 24th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
I keep finding myself wanting to compare Inherent Vice and The Wire -- funny they don't seem at first glance all that similar, beyond some superficial notes like a lot of characters being police, lawyers, or drug users -- and look how much I have to abstract to even get this superficial similarity to apply! But Bjornsen's plot to get Doc involved in (oh wait, careful about the spoilers) his personal grudge reminds me somehow of McNulty's subterfuge to get more money for the department. I would love to see Dominic West playing Bjornsen, and indeed for a while I was picking out actors from The Wire for all of the parts... There may be nothing at all to this juxtaposition. With both works, I had trouble being drawn into the plot and identifying with the characters, but had a good time with the watching/reading.
posted evening of August 18th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, August 17th, 2009
The clock up on the wall, which reminded Doc of elementary school back in the San Joachin, read some hour that it could not possibly be. Doc waited for the hands to move, but they didn't, from which he deduced that the clock was broken and maybe had been for years. Which was groovy however because long ago Sortilège had taught him the esoteric skill of tellig time from a broken clock. The first thing you had to do was light a joint, which in the Hall of Justice might seem odd, but surely not way back here -- who knew, maybe even outside the jurisdiction of local drug enforcement -- though to be on the safe side he also lit up a De Nobili cigar and filled the room with a precautionary cloud of smoke from the classic Mafia favorite. After inhaling pot smoke for a while, he looked up at the clock, and sure enough, it showed a different time now, though this could also be from Doc having forgotten where the hands were to begin with. I am not sure if this will sound like weak tea, recommendation-wise -- this is a nice compact example of the bits I am loving in Inherent Vice -- if it made you laugh, read the book for a lot more... The story is coming a bit more into focus for me towards the end of the book, but I'm definitely reading primarily for Pynchon's games.
posted evening of August 17th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, August 16th, 2009
Another difference between Inherent Vice and my standard category of novel-reading experience is, I like the reading a lot better if there is music playing in the background. Normally I have a hard time reading when I'm listening to music, here they seem to enhance one another. From my iTunes shuffle today:
- It ain't nobody's business, Mississippi John Hurt
- La-Do-Dada, Dale Hawkins
- What Goes On, Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips -- this was a very nice coincidence because it came on just as I was starting to read the lyrics to the Spotted Dicks' new single "Long Trip Out" (which is on the radio in Doc's car), and suddenly I am singing them to the tune of "What Goes On", and they are fitting pretty well. Here is a verse of it:
Long trip out, from the Mekong Delta...
It's a last lost chance, when you need a friend,
And you're flyin on out of
Cam Ranh Bay at midnight,
And you won't know how, to
Get back home again. Then I spent a little while distracted, trying to find out more about "What Goes On" -- turns out it is a Velvet Underground song. - The Birds Were Singing, Carter Family
- There'll be Joy, Joy, Joy, Carter Family -- the Carter Family threatening to distract from the novel, they do not quite work together.
- Floater, Bob Dylan -- now this is more like it --
- Till the End of the World, Ernie Tubb
- Salty Dog Blues, John Hurt
- Knockin on Heaven's Door, Dylan and the Band -- I was not actually participating in the music-listening/reading activity here, "Salty Dog" had reminded me that Lola needed to go out --
- I Something You, Robyn Hitchcock.
The book? I'm dying to recommend it to you but having trouble with what to say about it... I am bursting out laughing about once per page.
 ...and later on in the shuffle, Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra plays the "What-cha-call-'em Blues" which go very nicely with the lyrics I am reading at this moment, to Carmine and the Cal-Zones' "Just the Lasagna". Conclusion, when there's music playing it's much easier to imagine Pynchon's lyrics being sung.
posted afternoon of August 16th, 2009: Respond
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My resolution not to look for an (ill-defined) "normal novel-reading experience" in Inherent Vice is bearing fruit I think, at least in the sense that I'm enjoying the book a lot more. This reading is feeling sort of like walking through a large art gallery looking at a master's paintings -- short flashes of brilliance ranging from less than a page to a few pages -- and not dwelling too much on the meaning of each painting or on the linking narrative arc, just getting a sense of the exhibition's atmosphere. It is fun and liberating to approach the reading without telling myself that I have to "appreciate" it -- it's allowing me to get a lot of pleasure out of some of the jokes and phrasings and constructions of scene. I am not following the story-line very closely however. I'm a little surprised by this because of all the build-up this novel received as (approximately) Pynchon-lite, a quick summer beach read; I think in fact, it requires a lot of focus.
 Hm -- something sounds wrong about this argument -- I am saying I'm enjoying the book more by reading it in a less focussed way, and then that it requires a lot of focus. I think what I mean to say is, to get the full force of this book is going to require a more focussed second read, after I familiarize myself with the atmosphere of the book.
posted morning of August 16th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
Fun to see it confirmed that Mr. Pynchon is the voice-over narrator of this trailer video. Groovy, maybe you'll just want to read the book... ($27.95? That used to be like, 3 weeks of groceries! What year is this again?...)
posted evening of August 12th, 2009: Respond
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...I think he's not, really, though some of his books have affected me profoundly. A "great writer," certainly. Thinking about my experience reading Gravity's Rainbow I don't say as much "What a beautiful book that is!" as "There's a whole lot to think about there if you can get your head around it..." -- it is more like reading philosophy than like reading a novel, though obviously it's not a whole lot like reading philosophy either. I'm prompted to consider this by reading Inherent Vice -- it's a lot of fun, and more novel-like, probably, than either Gravity's Rainbow or Against the Day. But it's not seeming like a "great novel"; more like a fun book that is hampered by trying too hard to be a novel. So far I've read the first several chapters three times; each time I like the ideas and the bits of profound prose better, and each time I am more annoyed by the plot points that don't work and in particular by the ridiculous scene between Doc Sportello and Hope Harlingen. Time to move on I think and read the rest of the book... It's funny, I'm recommending this to people! It is a lot of fun! But also pretty flawed. Also I think it may be time soon to go back and reread Mason & Dixon, I think realizing I don't need to read it "as a novel" might be key to enjoying it.
posted evening of August 12th, 2009: Respond
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