Not Really a Review: Pynchon's Against the Day

It only took a year and a half, but I finally finished Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. It's brilliant: virtually every one of its 1085 pages contains something wonderful – beauty, insight, wit, surprise, even pathos – which is one reason it took so long to read.  It's also one reason that I sat mildly stunned when I finished the last page and closed the book.  Glad to be done? At one level, yes; I can read something else now (currently it's Philip Roth's Everyman).  But a part of me wished I had another thousand pages to go.

If this were a review, I'd try to find ways to entice you into picking it up: a quick summary (impossible), a look at the characters (too many), a representative passage (I only got blank looks the few times I tried that with some friends).  Indeed, I've tried, several times, to say something meaningful about the book, but to no avail; it's just too damn big.


Let's call it "sublime," in the Kantian sense, and leave it at that.  (If you find this evasion unsatisfactory, you can read the dust jacket's description, which is supposedly a revision of a description from Pynchon himself. It offers a nice taste.)


I don't usually recommend Pynchon unless pressed to do so.  People seem to love him or hate him.  Harold Bloom, that scholar and critic who has written more introductions to critical editions of literary works than I could even read in three lifetimes, lists Pynchon as one of the four most important living American novelists (along with Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth).  And lots of people list Pynchon's 1973 novel, Gravity's Rainbow, as one of the best and/or most important novels of the 20th century.


And then there are those who find him "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and "obscene" – to use words attributed to the Pulitzer Prize's advisory board when they overturned their own fiction jury's unanimous recommendation of Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. (No fiction prize was given that year.)


I suppose that invoking the Sublime to describe Against the Day gives away my position: simply stated, Pynchon is my favorite author. However, though Against the Day may be written better than Gravity's Rainbow – he's had 33 years to hone his already peerless skills – Gravity's Rainbow is still my favorite book.  If you twisted my arm, I'd recommend you read GR first (is it optimistic to say "first"?); I find it a more important book, both in the sense of American literary history and of the history that the book evokes and critiques.

So, gentle reader: I believe that reading Pynchon, though difficult, is rewarding and enriching.  But I've been proven wrong, as recently as last semester...  caveat lector...

Equilibrium v. The Matrix

On the wall of my office hangs a framed one-sheet of The Matrix. I'm a big fan of the cyberpunk aesthetic, so I find the poster to be just plain cool, with Keannu Reeves inhabiting the role he was born to play (most memorable line: "Whoa.") and, perhaps more to the point, the über-hot Carrie-Anne Moss wearing leather and holding a gun. What's not to like?

The movie, too, floats right near the top of my list of favorite films, sci-fi or othersise, almost inexplicably just below Blade Runner, and quite a bit above just about anything else. I remember when it came out; from the first frames, I felt the same gut-deep emotional connection that I'd felt way back in ninth grade when Luke Skywalker first wielded a light saber--and, of course, when Princess Leia first wielded a blaster... (Do we sense a pattern? I blame Emma Peel...)

So when a few different students saw my poster and told me that I must see Equilibrium because it's even better than The Matrix, I was pretty skeptical; not only would it need to qualify as better by criteria my students and I might agree on (tightness of script, philosophical depth, special effects, whatever); it would have to overcome that mid-life cathexis I mentioned. Taste in film is subjective enough already; when one film has the support of an unabashed adult-fanboy...

But I must say, I was surprisingly underwhelmed with Equilibrium. Sure, Christian Bale nails his character, running the gamut from emotionless ice to weepy sap. And sure, the plot twists fairly admirably (though nothing surprised me, even if I couldn't predict each turn).

And yes, the action scenes were engaging enough; the closing fight scene was especially fun, and a perfect example of the dictum I try to instill in my Creative Writing students: if you want your audience to be impressed when your hero wins, you need a really competent villain. But--aside perhaps from the first time Bale takes out his enemies--the action was all pretty straightforward--nowhere near as interesting as scenes in The Matrix, which, even when not employing the new-tech bullet time, had surprising subtlety (look again, for example, at the last fight scene between Neo and Agent Smith and the way the two seem to be fighting at different speeds).

But eye-candy violence aside, I was underwhelmed by Equilibrium's philosophical stance. My wife put it perfectly: she found it "heavy-handed," at times even "painful." (At first, I balked at the term "painful," but on reflection I realized that I did indeed wince a few times during the film.) The film hit the intended irony--at least, I suppose it was intended--of a hyper-violent war-free world so hard that it ceased to be irony. Worse, the philosophical debates over the paradoxical role of emotion, and its status as human essence, came across with all the subtlety of bad exposition--the kind where the butler and the maid talk about the master's crazy night out the previous evening (or, I'll admit, the type that crawls across the screen at the beginning of Star Wars... sigh.)

Having said this, though, I think I understand why these students--not all, perhaps, but certainly most of them--connected to Equilibrium so deeply. As are most of my Creative Writing students, they are children of Wordsworth--or, at least, of that oversimplified notion that good poetry (and, by extension, all art, including film) is an expression primarily of emotion, for emotion is the thing that makes us human. Take away emotion--whether through Equilibrium's Prozium, or Brave New World's Soma--and you destroy that thing that makes us human.

I know this will sound patronizing, but I can't help it: in my experience, students love that kind of thing.

The Matrix movies (if you ignore most of the last film--don't get me started) strike me as much more interesting. It's not that The Matrix's philosophical stance, at least on the surface, is any more radical: Humans are meant to be free, not enslaved by machines--oh! and, don't forget! No matter how bad things get, love will always save the day!

But there's always a question lurking behind this humanist optimism: is this real?

Near the end of the second Matrix film (Matrix Reloaded), there's a strange moment where the characters are all, it would appear, in the "real world," running from real life "squiddies," and Neo turns and--lo! and behold!--finds he has the power in the real world to shut them down. How intriguing... is this the real world? Or are we still in the Matrix?

I liked the second answer; it reminded me of Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of carnival and its celebration of how carnival inverts the established order--and, especially, the critiques of Bakhtin that dismiss this inversion as an escape-valve that actually serves to reinforce the established order. And, in great post-structuralist tradition (heh), Neo does indeed learn that he's only the latest in a long line of failed messiahs necessary to the Matrix's survival...

Unfortunately, the Wachowski brothers dropped the ball at that point, as far as I'm concerned; the last movie could have fallen into the vertiginous uncertainty of infinite regress, but chose instead to (somehow) link the real and simulated worlds through Neo. Alas, the series ends up embracing science fiction's largely conservative bent--philosophically, even when not so politically. A disappointment...

But at least The Matrix had those moments of uncertainty. In Equilibrium, all is presented about as directly--indeed, as pedantically--as imaginable. A man who has literally never felt anything in his life suddenly feels deeply and automatically: he weeps when he hears Beethoven, despite having grown up in a culture that has not socialized him to appreciate the organized noise we call classical music; he melts at puppy dog eyes, despite an inability to understand even the concept of having a pet. Etc...

Meh. Give me the failed questions of The Matrix any day.

Can't beat that...

That's me, grrray, at PokerStars with the best possible hand. Yeah. Bring it.

Now if only I were playing for meaningful stakes...

"The Torture Report": Inspiring?

On the Media had a brief interview today with Larry Siems, the principle author of an ACLU project that hopes to create an accessible narrative about post-9/11 anti-terrorist activities from thousands of pages of documents the ACLU obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

When I heard about the project, I was prepared to be depressed--especially when I heard the title: The Torture Report. I expected something along the lines of Mayer's The Dark Side.

There's good reason to be depressed, of course. The Torture Report's first chapter--all that is written so far, I understand--begins its narrative with events of Sept. 17, 2001, the day that President Bush signed a secret directive authorizing secret interrogation facilities. Also, at that time, Bush Administration lawyers wrote a memo declaring that the president may use the military on U.S. territory--in defiance to Congress, who, while granting the president authorization to use force in Afghanistan, had just refused to grant him that power.

I was pleasantly surprised, however, to hear Siems announce that he was, in fact, inspired by what he found when sifting through the mountains of documents: "There are an abundance of characters," he said, "who exhibit extraordinary courage and conscience along the way in this story--more than we ever knew."

In the interview, he reads the account of one interrogator, for example, who stood up to Special Forces troops who were harrassing--if that's quite the word for the fear they inflicted--a prisoner she was interrogating. This interrogator concludes her account with a defense of the Geneva Conventions: "if I don't honor it," she said, "what right to I have to expect any other military to do so?"

A month later, President Bush signed an order declaring that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners.

Siems' discovery--and the insight that I hope The Torture Report gets across--is that while a lot of really bad things were going on, there were, as Siems puts it, "so many people who looked at the same set of facts about the threats that we face and never moved in this direction, and when others moved in this direction they objected. We as a country owe it to those people to look at the whole story and to honor what they've done."

I want to hear more stories like this--not because I think people like Mayer are wrong (I reviewed her book favorably awhile back), or that they are focused on the wrong things, or anything like that. On the contrary, we need to look unblinking at what happened, in part to hold responsible parties to account, and in part to ensure that such abuses can't happen again.

But I do want to honor those who resisted the Dark Side. And I'm heartened to know that it was more than just a few brave people who did so.

Autism's Subtle Aches

Just about two years ago, our youngest son was diagnosed with autism. We were actually pretty fortunate; my wife had noticed tiny clues early on--earlier even than an official diagnosis was possible--so we'd already been receiving help. And he tested "high" on the spectrum--indeed, the doctor said that he was in a small percentage of children that could, with early intervention, come to test "off the spectrum" when they got older.

As diagnoses of autism go, this was a pretty good one, making it easy for me to slip into a subtle form of something akin to denial--not denial exactly, since I understood and accepted the diagnosis, but something like it: a denial of the importance of the diagnosis. Call it willful ignorance, for lack of a better term.

Shortly after, Oprah aired a special about families living with autism. I originally planned to skip it, since I'm not a huge Oprah fan--and anyway, I figured it wouldn't really apply to my situation.

I did end up watching it, though. At this distance, almost two years later, it's almost fascinating to see how well I insulated myself from understanding the effects of autism on these families. Denial and ignorance make truly effective armor.

I remember one father, though, weeping into the camera and saying, "I just want to hear him say Daddy." I should have identified with him, being a father myself. But all I could think was, "Daddy? Really?" Of all the things to be concerned about--all the difficulties facing the child, and his brother, and the family--that seemed about the most selfish possible.

And then, just a few weeks ago, I was at the mall, sitting on a bench in a play area, watching my two boys climbing little play structures, chasing each other, jumping down from what must have been for them great heights. And my boy, the boy with autism, turned to me and shouted in his four-year-old, speech-delayed voice, "Look at me, Daddy! Watch me!"

And right then, sitting on that bench in the mall, I thought of that father on Oprah, and found myself crying for him, and for me, and for the ways that autism insinuates itself into even the most simple moments.

A Five Year Old Reviews His Daddy's Band

Last night, toward the end of dinner, I played my old band The Reign’s album, Back from Euphoria.* It was more than just a matter of nostalgia; the band has decided to get together and do a reunion concert for the 20th anniversary of the album’s release. I thought it might be a good idea to see if I remember any of the songs. (I remembered all but two.)

Highlights from my conversation with my son:

HIM: That’s you on guitar?
ME: That’s me on guitar.
HIM: Were you good?
ME: (beat) Well, I was good for the band.
HIM: I think you’re really good.
ME: (beams)

HIM: Is that you singing?
ME: No, that’s Harold. He was the singer.
HIM: Did you sing?
ME: I sang back up with Travis.
HIM: Travis is in your carpool.
ME: No, that’s a different Travis.
HIM: Does he sing too?

HIM: Is that you singing?
ME: No, not yet.
(Repeat at least a dozen times)
ME: Hear those high notes? That’s me.
HIM: What high notes?

HIM: Did you know how to drive a car when you were in this band?

HIM: You played all loud and fast songs.
ME: No, there’s a slow song on there somewhere.
HIM: You played rock and roll, right? I like rock and roll.
ME: Yes.

HIM: I like your band better than the Beatles.
ME: O.o

I’ll admit it made me feel pretty good. It’s always nice to earn the respect of one’s son.

And then he went outside to perform his favorite Jonas Brothers songs.

Sigh.

*Yes, that's a link to Amazon.com, but you can hear the songs free at the band's Facebook page.

Confirmed: The Dark Side

About a month ago, I blogged a bit about Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side. I was convinced by her argument, but one always wonders about them there journalists and their godless liberal agendas....

Enter the U.S. Senate’s Report of the Committee on Armed Services, dated Nov. 20, 2008 – about four months after Mayer’s book was published – which was just put up on the Senate’s website.

I’ll need some time to slog through the 263-page document, but I found this nugget in the Executive Summary. There’s a lot packed into one short paragraph, so savor it:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority. This report is a product of the Committee’s inquiry into how those unfortunate results came about.

This is pretty much Mayer's thesis.

Score one for the journalist....