The Replacement of the Magical by the Strictly Prosaic

July 10, 2023 11:50 PM

Whatever his religious belief or unbelief, theological elements are central to his imagination, and over the course of his long career have assumed a distinctive shape that is worthy of our closest attention, above all because these elements so powerfully address American culture today: a culture that wants to be thought spiritual but never religious, to use history as a weapon but never acknowledge it as an inheritance, to worship its own technologies while simultaneously lamenting their tyrannical power. from The Far Invisible: Thomas Pynchon as America’s Theologian [Hedgehog Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

The writing in this is a total car crash but I love Pynchon so much and was raised by Calvinists so … I’m still quite enjoying it
posted by thedaniel at 1:16 AM on July 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

should i elect to read this article or is it part of the preterite?
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 4:02 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

that depends. Are you Constant Slothrop or Variable Slothrop? [PDF]
posted by chavenet at 4:09 AM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I dunno about "total car crash" but you gotta admire any oeuvre-scale attempt to explain Pynchon. (I, too, am enjoying it.)
posted by whuppy at 6:43 AM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

An excellent headline chosen from the article, but we would have also accepted "Buffoonery is a way of resisting that dark morphosis."
posted by whuppy at 9:12 AM on July 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

What an amazing article. I was completely entranced and feel like I experienced something deep but I have no idea what it really was.

Much like reading Pynchon, really.

I haven't picked up Bleeding Edge yet even though we have a copy sitting here in the house. Against The Day took me four attempts in print and then I finally finished in via audiobook, itself a remarkable ~60 hours long, and that sort of burned me out for audiobooks.

But now I'm thinking, Mason & Dixon in Audiobook? Maybe? I loved reading it...
posted by hippybear at 12:25 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Huh. Turns out I'd downloaded the original, apparently superior audiobook of Mason & Dixon a few years ago but it's been sitting in a folder on my hard drive ever since. It's now in my iTunes and when I'm ready I can listen.
posted by hippybear at 12:57 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love Mason & Dixon -- to me, it's Pynchon's greatest achievement. And I've read almost all of his work. (I admit I lost momentum about halfway thru Bleeding Edge, because I couldn't get past the fact that it was set in a place and time I knew -- the world of web development in early 2000s NYC -- and yet didn't quite ring true to my experience of that milieu.)

This is a great essay -- a bravura work of criticism as art form.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:26 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Interesting essay, though he is almost over-reaching in places. Pynchon's books are about a lot of different things, and sure quasi-mystical spiritualism is in there, along with everything else.

Just finished Mason and Dixon recently, and it's really... something. It's impressive, but it's also rather dense and not an easy read. One of my fave titles of his, I think.
posted by ovvl at 1:31 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I found Mason & Dixon entirely enchanting and a really breezy read. Yeah, there's a lot going on, but it's one of his funniest books by far and it really just swings along.

Against The Day, however, was really too much for me in print. It's so many different narratives and narrative styles all rolling up against each other, and it's quite jarring with its juxtapositions of narrative... I did get through it with someone performing it for me [the author does dozens and dozens of characters and helps keep them separate for the listener], but man... it's just really a lot.
posted by hippybear at 1:37 PM on July 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

"the author"... "the reader". grrr.
posted by hippybear at 1:54 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Against The Day, however, was really too much for me in print. It's so many different narratives and narrative styles all rolling up against each other, and it's quite jarring with its juxtapositions of narrative...

Agree -- it felt like there was enough material for several different novels in there, all just kind of thrown together. I guess you could say that about some of his other books too, to an extent, but that one had the least internal cohesion, IMO.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:20 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, I mean, as with most Pynchon, the experience you have while trying to read the book is reflective of the content and narrative of the book. Against The Day is set during a very very incoherent period of social, political, and technological upheaval, and it's different narratives are all ones that existed during that time, and they're all trying to cope, in their own way with the events in question... and yeah, it's all too much because the world then was just all too much.

Doesn't mean I found it a good read, though.
posted by hippybear at 2:25 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I found Mason & Dixon entirely enchanting and a really breezy read...

Enchanting, yes; breezy read, uh...nope, it's all dense archaic writing style with implications in almost every sentence.
posted by ovvl at 5:47 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

>> I found Mason & Dixon entirely enchanting and a really breezy read...

> Enchanting, yes; breezy read, uh...nope, it's all dense archaic writing style with implications in almost every sentence.

and more of those implications than one might suspect concern sheep farts
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:34 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I should point out to everyone in this thread, if they're not already aware, the Pynchon Wiki will guide you through his books if you really want to know every implication of every sentence.
posted by hippybear at 9:48 PM on July 11, 2023 [1 favorite]