The Sounding: July 2020

____________________

* 1 *

The lunatic is on the grass.

Remembering games, and daisy chains, and laughs,
[we've] got to keep the loonies on the path....

And if the dam breaks open many years too soon,
and if there is no room upon the hill,
and if your head explodes with dark forebodings, too,
I'll meet you on the dark side of the moon.

-- Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon, "Brain Damage" (1)

Here are some things that happened in (and with) the United States of America in 1973:

President Richard M. Nixon was sworn in for his second term.
Ohio became the first state to post signs with distances written in metrics.
The Supreme Court overruled the states' right to ban abortion with the new ruling, Roe v Wade.
UCLA won its 7th consecutive men's college basketball National Championship title under head coach John Wooden.
The World Trade Center opened in New York City.
The last U.S. soldier was withdrawn (officially) from Vietnam.
The Watergate scandal/investigation intensified.
The first hand-held cellular phone call was made by Martin Cooper in New York City.
In Super Bowl VII the Miami Dolphins, under head coach Don Shula, beat the Washington Redskins 14-7. The Dolphins' victory capped a perfect, unbeaten 17-0 season--still an NFL record today.
Pioneer 11 was launched, with its mission to study the solar system.
A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and American Indian Movement activists--occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee in South Dakota--ended with the militants' surrender.
Thoroughbred racehorse, Secretariat, became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years with his victory at the Belmont Stakes. Secretariat's win by 31 lengths is still considered by many to be one of the greatest achievements in race history.
Congress passed the Education of the Handicapped Act (EHA), federally mandating Special Education.
DJ Kool Herc originated the (then "new") genre of hip-hop music in New York City.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was founded.
The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its DSM-II.
Egypt and Israel signed a U.S.-sponsored peace-treaty accord.
Skylab, the first U.S. space station, was launched.
Skylab 2 was launched, with a mission to repair damages to the recently launched Skylab.
Skylab 3 was launched, with a mission to conduct medical and scientific experiments aboard Skylab, which had been previously launched, and then damaged, and then repaired by the also-previously launched Skylab 2.
The U.S. bombing of Cambodia ended (officially).
The Oakland A's repeated their MLB championship title following their victory over the New York Mets, 5-2, in Game 7 of the World Series.
The Buffalo Bills' O.J. Simpson became the first NFL running back to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season.
The Endangered Species Act was passed. (2)
The movie, The Exorcist--with a screenplay by William Peter Blatty (based on his bestselling novel from two years earlier) and directed by young wunderkind filmmaker, William Friedkin--was released to wide outcry and acclaim. Long lines of eager, trepidatious filmgoers wrapped around city blocks, awaiting their chance to see the film, despite (and even largely because of) reported stories of audience members passing out and/or vomiting during the movie. (Due to the hysteria and the resulting crowds around it, The Exorcist would become an early--if not the first--American film to herald in a new age of "blockbuster films" in cinema. A welcome blessing to some aficionados. A death-knell of the art form to other cinephiles.)
The British psychedelic/progressive rock band, Pink Floyd, released their 8th studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon, which would go on to sell over 45 million copies, would become entrenched on U.S. music charts for over 950 weeks, would be a mainstay on record players and stereos the world over, and would serve as fodder--inside a perpetual cloud of skunky smoke--for marijuana-inspired dissection, discussion, and debate in dorm rooms for decades.
Young American author Thomas Pynchon had published two previous novels to somewhat unanimous (if not generously confused) acclaim--V. (1963) and The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). After setting a high bar for himself, there would follow a silent hiatus from Pynchon and his typewriter--a period which drove speculation and anticipation through the roof: What would this great young writer surprise us with next? It was in this atmosphere, then, that Pynchon would finally reveal his third novel to the reading world: Gravity's Rainbow.

____________________

* 2 *

"We have to talk in some kind of code, naturally," continues the Manager. "We always have. But none of the codes is that hard to break. Opponents have accused us, for just that reason, of contempt for the people. But really we do it all in the spirit of fair play. We're not monsters. We know we have to give them some chance. We can't take hope away from them, can we?"

-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Part 4: "The Counterforce" (3)

Off the Japanese mainland--940 km. (580 mi.) south-southeast of Tokyo--the small, nondescript isle of Nishinoshima had existed silently for thousands of years as a barely noticeable splotch of terra firma in the Pacific Ocean's Volcanic Island Arc. (4) At Nishinoshima's center slept a dormant volcanic vent, until around 1973, anyway, when the isle--for whatever reason--decided to wake up, stretch its atrophied limbs, yawn, and get out of bed. Inexplicably, Nishinoshima--after lying small and dormant since forever--began to grow. A series of volcanic eruptions sent a flow of ash and lava cascading downward (as volcanoes are wont to do), pooling and collecting in cooled, blackened piles around the island's impressively alert blow-hole.

Steam. Rumblings. Sulphur. Fire. Lava. The whole miasmatic stuff of Genesis.

[Aside: ...or Hell...take your pick on which end of the Bible you want to start from, I guess. Of course, the Japanese tradition of reading sees a book beginning from right to left, though, so...there's that.]

Varieties of plants and animal species have, over time, begun to call the island home. To this day, Nishinoshima has defied odds and continues to grow every year. As of 2019, the island was measured at 2.89 sq km (1.12 sq mi). (5) Scientists are stymied and even somewhat amused, viewing it as a cute sort of anomaly, almost. Even some of the world's top scientists cannot predict how long little Nishinoshima's growth spurt will last or how big it will eventually become when the island's beating heart and breathing lungs inevitably fall silent again.

But as all the poets of the world and all the shaman of varied cultures over time have reminded us [Aside: and that would include George Harrison, of course] all things must pass.

____________________

* 3 *

BENOIT BLANC: .... I anticipate the terminus of Gravity's Rainbow.
MARTA CABRERA: Gravity's Rainbow...
BENOIT BLANC: It's a novel.
MARTA CABRERA: Yeah, I know. I haven't read it, though.
BENOIT BLANC: Neither have I. Nobody has. But I like the title. It describes the path of a projectile determined by natural law.

-- Knives Out, Screenplay: Rian Johnson, Director: Rian Johnson (6)

I was 30 years old when I first decided to read a Pynchon novel. At the time, in 1997, his fifth novel, the pistache-intermingled pseudo-historical yarn, Mason & Dixon, had just been published to some considerable fanfare; after all, with a writer of Pynchon's notoriously hermetic privacy and (at that time) sparse output, the arrival of a new book from the celebrated author of Gravity's Rainbow was a relatively big deal--at least to those who pay attention to such arcana. At that time in my life, I was already familiar with postmodernism and with the name of Thomas Pynchon. I even owned two of his previous books: 1965's The Crying of Lot 49, and his most recent book (at that time), 1990's Vineland, although I had not yet read either of them. Up to that point in my reading life, "Thomas Pynchon" existed as a name on the spine of books sitting on my shelf, proudly on display, undisturbed and unread, gathering the dust of good intentions.

The thought was always there in the back of my mind, though: I'll get to him sometime.

And then in 1997 when Mason & Dixon came along, I decided it was time to get serious (so to speak) and get to him. So I did.

I remember liking Mason & Dixon. Though it was distorted and a little confusing and "different," I wasn't surprised or put off by it. I expected a fair degree of experimentalism and surrealism, knowing enough about Thomas Pynchon (even though, as I say, up to that point I had never read a word from him). But I liked the novel. Getting through his thick maze of such devices as vocabulary and characters and "plot" (such as it is) took some time and effort. But it was worth it in the end. It paid off. I liked it.

I remember that year, 1997, as being a year of at least a couple of "big" books by "big" postmodern American authors who had made a name for themselves and had since fallen rather silent. Not only did Pynchon make an impressive return with his new novel in 1997, but he was joined by fellow American author Don DeLillo and his latest novel, Underworld. Over the years, DeLillo had quietly crept up on readers--he had managed to establish a kind of underground cult-following of fans. But it wasn't until 1985's White Noise that he gained major attention from the critics and the public alike. Winning the National Book Award that year, DeLillo followed in 1988 with the publication of Libra, his controversial yet critically lauded fictional retelling of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and his covert participation in a CIA plot to assassinate the American president. Libra was nominated for the National Book Award, but it lost out (possibly due to the criticisms it gained from its divisive characterizations and plot). Three years later, in 1991, DeLillo published the novel Mao II, which would see him win, this time, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

DeLillo was a writer who had slowly earned his place, and 1997 seemed to cement his legacy as a "great" and "important" writer of late-20th century American literature with the publication of his masterwork, Underworld. The book is massive, written by a massive talent, and it couldn't help but draw attention to itself. Once again DeLillo was nominated for the National Book Award, as well as shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. The book wouldn't win either of those awards, but it would go on to be named by the New York Times as a runner-up for the best work of American fiction over the (then) past 25 years, falling second only to Toni Morrison's Beloved, which had appeared 10 years earlier.

[Aside: Just in case you're curious, here is a list of some other books--both fiction and nonfiction--that were published in 1997 alongside Mason & Dixon and Underworld--all which help to point to 1997, I would say, as an exceptional year in the publishing world:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
Personal History, Katherine Graham
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace]

Anyway, what was I talking about?... Oh yeah: the appearance of Mason & Dixon during a year of big reads.

So, anyway, my point is it was a busy year--1997--if you're someone who enjoys reading and who enjoys the enjoyment of reading something challenging and worthwhile.

I had, as it turns out, more than I bargained for that year, tackling (among some of the other titles mentioned on the list above) both Mason & Dixon and Underworld. Both of them are big books (in every imaginable meaning of the word "big.") They both have many pages to them. They are dense. They have mass and weight. They take up space. You know you have a book in your backpack or in your hands when you hold either of those two books. You know you're really reading something. They're not "light" reading. They're not passive reading. It's not a joke, holding a book like Underworld or Mason & Dixon--laid open on your lap, or propped up, or grasped with both hands before you, reading the words on the page, making sense of them, making connections with the words to other words and to other images and to other ideas.

This is what reading is about, after all. It was a hell of a year. And when I was through with those two books, I knew I was impressed with them. I knew I wasn't done yet with those two authors. I knew I wanted more from them.

And first up (if for no other reason than I already had two of his books waiting for me on my shelf) was Pynchon.

____________________

* 4 *

Meantime, Jessica has gone into her Fay Wray number. This is a kind of protective paralysis, akin to your own response when the moray eel jumps you from the ceiling. But this is for the Fist of the Ape, for the lights of electric New York white-waying into the room you thought was safe, could never be penetrated . . . for the coarse black hair, the tendons of need, of tragic love. . . .

"Yeah, well," as film critic Mitchell Prettyplace puts it in his definitive 18-volume study of King Kong, "you know, he did love her, folks." Proceeding from this thesis, it appears that Prettyplace has left nothing out, every shot including out-takes raked through for every last bit of symbolism, exhaustive biographies of everyone connected with the film, extras, grips, lab people . . . even interviews with King Kong Kultists, who to be eligible for membership must have seen the movie at least 100 times and be prepared to pass an 8-hour entrance exam. . . . And yet, and yet: there is Murphy's Law to consider, that brash Irish proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem--when everything has been taken care of, when nothing can go wrong, or even surprise us . . . something will.

-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Part 2: "Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering" (7)

Immediately after Mason & Dixon, I turned toward my bookshelf and read the two books that had been sitting there waiting for me--Pynchon's legendary second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, and his much-anticipated and generally well-received fourth novel, Vineland (although at the time, among some circles, it was also considered "disappointing" in some ways, probably because of its having to follow Gravity's Rainbow...and having taken 17 years to do it).

I liked those novels, as well. Entertaining. A bit challenging, but in a good way. A productive way, I suppose. A bit confusing. A bit high-strung, with more questions than answers--but again in a good way. I like that sort of thing. I like to be pushed by a good writer who is intelligent and daring enough to trust himself and his readers with something different and something challenging.

What was it with all this talk about Pynchon's supposed abstract inscrutability and his notorious impenetrability? This wasn't so bad. In fact, I rather liked it.

And with that, I went to my nearest bookstore and plunked down the necessary change for the book that I'd heard so much about, the book that (along with his 1963 debut novel, V.) earned Pynchon such labels as "unreadable," "unendurable," "a mad genius," and "the king's jester and prankster, with actually nothing to say and taking 800 pages to reveal his point": I bought Gravity's Rainbow that day, along with a handy little readers' guide to the novel, providing chapter-by-chapter, page-by-page, line-by-line contextual resources and notes. (I had learned to use a similar tool a few years back, making my way, in graduate school, through James Joyce's Ulysses at the time. It helped.)

I was ready. There was nothing to stop me. It was time. I opened the novel (while open beside me, as well, next to a fresh cup of coffee, was the reader's guide.) New beginnings. New mountains to climb. Possibilities awaiting me. The thrill of discovery. The joy of reading. The opening lines of Gravity's Rainbow:

"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now...." (8)

____________________

* 5 *

This book is total crapola. Pretentious, meandering, empty. Save your time and money and stare at a wall for a couple of weeks. You will look back at the time as having been more productive than reading this screwed up exercise in bad typing.

-- Alan, "Crapola," 2013, 1-star review on Amazon.com for Thomas Pynchon's, Gravity's Rainbow (9)

I think, as memory serves me, I made it to about...maybe...roughly page 50 or so (-ish) before closing the front cover of the novel with a long, intentional sigh, and putting it on the shelf next to The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland. Now in my personal Pynchon collection I could also proudly display the postmodern "classic," Gravity's Rainbow, along with, of course, its handy reader's guide, which helped to provide chapter-by-chapter, page-by-page, line-by-line contextual resources and notes...at least to about page 50 or so (-ish).

And that was that.

____________________

* 6 *

A gerund comes across the sky....

-- Leatherbags Reynolds, 2015, Comments section on Amazon.com regarding Thomas Pynchon's, Gravity's Rainbow (10)

Except that wasn't that. Not exactly.

____________________

* 7 *

FATHER KARRAS: Why her, though? Why this girl?
FATHER MERRIN: I think the point is to make us despair. To see ourselves as animal and ugly. To make us reject the possibility that God could love us.

-- The Exorcist, Screenplay: William Peter Blatty, Director: William Friedkin, (11)

There was a game I used to like to play when I was a little boy. I don't know if "game" is the right word, since it was a rather solitary act, and no one knew I was doing it except for me, which I guess may have been the point. At least partly.

[Aside: I guess.]

Either way, the "game" was simple, and it could exist in at least a couple of different forms:

I would excuse myself from the rest of the family (although they were never aware of this) and find the thin grill of an AC/heating vent to lay down next to, my ear close to the metal, holding my breath, and listening to the hushed, muted sound--filtered through the old house's snaking ductwork--of my brothers' voices as they played in the basement without me; or,
I would bury myself in a closet, or under a bed, or in a bathroom, or behind the sofa--anywhere that I felt was sufficient cover--and I would wait quietly and patiently in my hiding place, playing at "being gone"--nonexistent, absent, never there, nevermore, alone....

Strange, I know. Maybe. But invariably here's how that little "game" of mine always managed to play itself out:

I remember it as if it always took place in the summertime, as if it were perpetual summer during my childhood, or perhaps as if the notion of playing the game only occurred to me during the summer months; but whatever the case it is always summer--the cauldron-like crucible of Kansas summers that always in memory, now, seem to be composed of the unlikely combination of both an unmercifully dry heat and a rain-forest like humidity, carried along on a steady 35-mph wind, with no hills or trees to break its flow, scorching everything in its path like the breath of a dragon. And here I am inside the house, comfortable and cool, seeking out the metal grate on the floor that would give me access to the game. I lay there, my face in the carpet--still showing streaks from the brushes of the recent vacuum-sweeper--my ear pressed against the metal floor-vent, listening to the muffled voices of my brothers below. I can barely make out words. I wonder what they're saying, what they're doing. Only occasionally does a specific word float (echoic) through the air ducts to my ear. Only on those occasions can I make out what is being said from the basement. My stomach tickles with my secret knowledge: I'm listening, and they don't know I'm listening; they don't know where I am. I hold my breath to hear better and to also not give myself away. "Did you hear that? I thought I heard something--it sounded like someone breathing. You didn't hear that?" I don't want to speak. I don't want to utter a sound, to send words down past the vent, echoing down into the duct, revealing the truth of my game to my brothers. The game would be pointless, then, and it would be over. It would all come to an end. So I simply want to listen to them. I simply want to be quiet and to be unobserved, unheard, unbothered, undiscovered. And then, to keep up with the Kansas summer outside, the house's central air-conditioning unit kicks on, and a sudden breath of cool air licks my cheek, and I smell a faint odor of dust blowing up from the ductwork, and I can hear no more from the basement below. But the tickling feeling in my stomach remains; or,
Once I choose my hiding place in the house, I hide. And I remain as quiet as possible, listening to life go on around me, without me. And I hold my breath, or try to, while also trying to hold back a laugh, which would give my game away. So I listen. And I wait. I wait for someone to say, "Hey, has anyone seen Dave, lately? Have you seen him around? I've gotta ask him something important. No one's seem him? That's weird. Where could he be? I hope he's all right." But every single time, nothing like this ever happens. No one ever says anything like this. No one even notices I am missing. No one detects my absence from the scene. "Hey, I'm back," I think I might say, popping out suddenly from being hidden, taking them all by surprise and really showing them what they were missing. "Did you even stop to think that I was gone? Did anyone even care that I wasn't here? Hello?" But as always, after about ten minutes of it, I get bored with this version of the game, and I come out of hiding to resume my life, as if nothing ever happened. Because nothing ever did.

____________________

* 8 *

[The novel] is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience.... For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can't be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it's true.

-- Don DeLillo (interviewed) (12)

I'm not sure how accurate it is to use a word like "fault" when it comes to reading, and particularly when it comes to starting a book that--for whatever reason(s)--you find yourself unable to finish, or maybe it's just not working for you, or engaging you, or speaking to you, or maybe you simply can't keep your mind from drifting and wandering and wondering about all the other books you could be reading at this time instead.

It's not an uncommon thing. Is it?

Who is "at fault" if, as a reader, you start a book you can't finish or don't want to finish? Is anyone or anything finally to blame for something like that? Is something missing in you as a reader? Or is something missing in the book itself? Or is something missing from the writer--mistakes that he or she made in the writing of the book?

Where does the fault lie if you begin a book and you don't want to finish it? What does this say about you? What does this say about the book? What does this say about the writer? Anything at all? Where is there a weakness? Anywhere?

Or could it just be that maybe it's the wrong time for the reader and the book to "hook up"? (Maybe later in life? Maybe never?) Or could it be something as simple as personal taste and choice in reading material? Maybe it's just not your "thing," after all? Or could it be that the writer is just not that good--despite all the hype, perhaps? Is it all of the above, at least in parts? Or could it be none of the above? Maybe, in the end, it's "just one of those things that happens." No biggie.

A no-fault divorce; no one to blame here, simply set the book aside or return it to the shelf where you got it. You gave it a shot, after all; you at least did that much. "It's only a book, for Christ's sake," you hear the voices saying. "There are others. It's not the end of the world if you don't finish a book. What difference does it make? Just choose another book to read, if you have to. One that's more to your liking. Good Lord, worry about something important. It's not fucking rocket science, you know...."

Except....

Call me crazy, but I'm proud of the fact that I like to read and that when I choose to pick up a book it's usually done with some deliberation and with some careful forethought, coming to the conclusion that, before picking it up and opening to the first page, I have--for whatever reasons--determined that this book will interest me, entertain me, challenge me, push me, test me, teach me...something. Otherwise, I don't want to waste my time.

So, in a way it is rocket science.

I'm a book snob. I know that. I get it. I'm fine with that label. Call me what you will, but I don't like to skim-read. I don't like to skip pages. I don't like to turn to Sparknotes or to LitCharts or to the last page to get the ending. I don't like to cheat on a book or on myself. And I don't like to quit a book before getting to the end. I'm a completionist, I guess you could say; I want to see things through to the end--even if it's the bitter end. I don't like giving up before it's over. I have to see if the writer had a plan and if that plan somehow works itself out in some sort of artistic and satisfying way. I have to see if I have what it takes to stick it out, for better or worse, through the good and the bad, and make it to the other side of the book, if for no other reason than to just prove to myself that I can do it. And that the writer knew what he or she was doing. And that I knew what I was doing all along, too.

[Aside: As the years have gone on, I've kind of come to the conclusion that I am that way with people, as well. I've been in relationships before that, by all rights, probably should have killed me with the stress of hanging on too long, the stress of not wanting to let go, the stress of not wanting to give up, to call it quits, to admit defeat, and to be alone. I am stubborn, if nothing else, and like a cat I've lived longer than I should have, time and time again, trying to prove this stubbornness to myself, if to no one else. A book is like a person. Or else a person is like a book. I don't know which. I just know that I approach them both in much the same way these days. You choose a book as you choose a person. You do this carefully, or at least you should. You do it willfully. Thoughtfully. You open them with anticipation and care, going slowly at first, savoring the words, the imagery, the careful introduction, the developing plot and characterization, the gentle give-and-take of them. And you make your way through, and you learn how to read a particular book the same way you learn to know a person. People want to be loved, after all, and a book wants to be read. With patience, with paying attention to the details, and with knowledge of yourself and of who you are, over time a person will show you how to love. Similarly, by a book's end--before you turn its last page and read its last sentence and close its cover--the book will teach you how to read it. And that's important.]

____________________

* 9 *

If you don't go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally. If you reject aesthetic satisfactions you will fall into sensual satisfactions.... If you don't read good books you will read bad ones.

-- C.S. Lewis (13)

I could say several things, maybe, about my first attempt at reading Gravity's Rainbow in the late 1990s, and why I didn't make it very far in the book, and why I quickly grew frustrated with it, and why I was able to set it aside so easily.

Actually, for anyone who has either read the novel (or tried to read the novel) you will know that I probably don't need to explain much. The reasons are all pretty much right there in the early part of Pynchon's long, circuitous, maddening novel.

And it isn't as if I had never taken on challenging reads before. I've proudly taken to task some rather "big," "demanding," "difficult" books and come out the other side--always better for it. [Aside: See Appendix A.] Of course, there are also a fair number of books that I've consciously (or unconsciously) either chosen to stay away from or simply never taken the time to crack open. [Aside: See Appendix B.] Still, there are those books (important, great books, I know, I know...) that, like Gravity's Rainbow when I was a "young" man in my early 30s, I dived into, headfirst, with the best of intentions, only to flounder, slapping away at the water momentarily, until finally dragging myself ashamedly to the shore, watching the book purposelessly float away from me. [Aside: See Appendix C.]

I think my problem (at that time, trying to read Pynchon's infamous novel) was the reader's guide I kept open next to me as I read. I would find myself reading each note as it came up in its context within the story. That method of dancing my eyes back and forth--between the novel and its explanatory notes--helped get me through Joyce's novel of Leopold Bloom years before. In the case of Gravity's Rainbow, though, it didn't work. Such a method this time had the opposite effect of what was intended: 1.) It was slowing my reading down interminably; 2.) It was confusing me even more with what was going on in the book's plot; and 3.) It was causing me to quickly lose interest and to wonder why I was going to so much trouble.

And so I stopped. Christ, there are easier and more enjoyable ways to spend your time, after all.

But it bothered me. I don't like quitting, and it lodged in the back of my brain (this idea that I perhaps had not given the book a fair attempt) and it stayed there. The memory of Gravity's Rainbow, sitting on my shelf unfinished--hell, basically unstarted--lingered. Time moved on, though, and I read other books, and I discovered other writers, and I became familiar with established, great writers, like Cormac McCarthy, as well as new, young novelists like David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Franzen (both of whom were deeply indebted, in their own ways, to postmodernism and to metafiction and to writers like Pynchon, et al.)

[Aside: In fact, young,"up-and-coming" writers like Franzen and Wallace have been, on more than one occasion in their varied careers, labeled "Pynchonesque" by more than one reviewer. I'm not sure how a writer like Thomas Pynchon feels about having his last name morphed into an adjective, and then having that adjective used to describe a new generation of writers following in his footsteps (sort of), or if a writer like Pynchon is even aware of such goings on these days, or if he even cares.]

Somewhere in his hermetically-sealed little world, though, of perfectly controlled privacy and quietness and aloneness, from which he would send out an out-of-the-blue missive every now and then (the occasional book review, comment, "blurb") or the latest tome of a novel, meant to encapsulate an entire decade, Pynchon seemed to get the message that he was, for better or worse, considered an important contemporary literary/cultural figure, and it seems as if he began to wake up to that fact and respond in kind. Suddenly Pynchon was everywhere (at least for him and his notorious lack of "presence"). In the Introduction to his 1984 collection of early short stories, Slow Learner, he would offer just the barest glimpse of autobiographical hints--it's not much, granted, but it's still all there is for those who are looking for such a thing. Also, his "character"--masked by a brown paper bag--made an appearance on The Simpsons (a sign of cultural coolness and "arrivedness," if there ever was one). And more importantly was the arrival of new novels--[Aside: "novels," as in plural.] In 1990, as mentioned, Vineland was published, after a 17-year silent retreat from the man; in 1997 Mason & Dixon was published; and then, in 2006, his long-rumored, much-mystiqued, massive 1,085-page monster of a novel Against the Day finally saw the light of day.

[Aside: I own the hardback copy of Against the Day. I bought it, 1st edition, immediately after its surprise-publication. It sits (heavily) on my shelf, unread. I have not tried to read it, nor do I plan to (I think). Perhaps it is a case, this time, of admitting defeat before even pretending a halfhearted attempt. I don't know. I guess it's always good to know one's limits.]

Three years later--like an unlikely breath of fresh air--came 2009's Inherent Vice. At a mere 369 pages, this was Pynchon's shortest novel since 1965's The Crying of Lot 49. Just looking at the physicalness of the book, Inherent Vice is one of the more "approachable" novels in his oeuvre, maybe. It doesn't immediately scare you off by its sheer heft. This time around, Pynchon chose to take on the Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe thing, drowned in a druggy atmosphere of comic-noirish late-'60s/early-'70s California confusion, sprinkled with a creeping sense of post-pot paranoia (of course), as well as a nagging case of the munchies.

[Aside: I bought this book, too. I read it. I found it to be "Pynchon-lite" in many ways, but pleasantly so. Here, as always, there are the typical Pynchon ingredients of plot-convolution and puzzles-within-puzzles and red-herrings of subplots-within-subplots-within-subplots, all leading to frayed ends and seeming to going nowhere. But I liked it...even though I can't fairly summarize the novel's storyline (if it even matters) and even though I can't say I understood it all (or if you're even supposed to), I still liked the book. And come to think of it, that is perhaps the best Sparknoted statement of Pynchon's literary legacy that could ever be written: "Even though I'm not sure I totally understand it, I like it."]

Finally, rounding out this trio of books in a seeming late-period burst of creative output, Pynchon published his eighth novel, Bleeding Edge, in 2013. Set in a fictional New York City shortly before the terrible events of September 11, 2001, and focusing on the (then) growing (and secretive) world of "dark web"-style dot.com industries, Bleeding Edge sits mysteriously on my bookshelf, its title on the spine looming at me, reminding me it is there, waiting for me, and waiting for the next title from its aging, prolific author [Aside: what will it be? when will it be?] to join it on the shelf.

[Aside: Like Against the Day, I have not yet read Bleeding Edge. But unlike Against the Day, I do plan on reading it. One of these days. Sometime. As soon as I get around to it. It's waiting for me, like so many other titles on my "to-read" list, it seems. So we'll see.]

But first (as always) there was this little matter of Gravity's Rainbow to take care of....

____________________

* 10 *

Skippy, you little fool, you are off on another of your senseless and retrograde journeys. Come back, here, to the points. Here is where the paths divided. See the man back there. He is wearing a white hood. His shoes are brown. He has a nice smile, but nobody sees it. Nobody sees it because his face is always in the dark. But he is a nice man. He is the pointsman. He is called that because he throws the lever that changes the points. And we go to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. Or "Der Leid-Stadt," that's what the Germans call it. There is a mean poem about the Leid-Stadt, by a German man called Mr. Rilke. But we will not read it, because we are going to Happyville. The pointsman has made sure we'll go there. He hardly has to work at all. The lever is very smooth and easy to push. Even you could push it, Skippy. If you knew where it was. But look what a lot of work he has done, with just one little push. He has sent us all the way to Happyville, instead of to Pain City. That is because he knows just where the points and the lever are. He is the only kind of man who puts in very little work and makes big things happen, all over the world. He could have sent you on the right trip back there, Skippy. You can have your fantasy if you want, you probably don't deserve anything better, but Mister Information tonight is in a kind mood. He will show you Happyville.

-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Part 4: "The Counterforce" (14)

The Island of Yesterday's Tomorrow

or, "Time Lost and Found"
or, "Feeling the Weight of Gravity's Pull"
(with all due respect to R.E.M.)

[an Original Screenplay]

*******

[Cinematography in B/W: Described in the Pre-Production Pitch as, "Real Gregg Toland/Citizen Kane by-way-of Ortello Martelli/La Dolce Vita by-way-of Sven Nykvist/Persona by-way-of Laszlo Kovacs/Paper Moon by-way-of Gordon Willis/Manhattan Kind of Stuff"]

*******

FADE IN--BEGIN TITLE SEQUENCE

EXT. AERIAL SHOT--DAY- SKY--CLOUDS

A bird's-eye POV as the camera calmly, soundlessly (save for the faint noise of wind) floats through a bank of clouds. Finally, the camera breaks under the clouds. Below is seen the surface of water, the ocean stretching on and on endlessly. Wave patterns and faint shadows of clouds can be seen upon the water's surface as the camera's POV continues its descent, floating freely.

(INSERT)

A human eye is shown in close-up, closed, asleep. Faint twitching behind the eyelid can minutely be detected, as if the eye is experiencing rapid eye movement while dreaming. Hold momentarily. The sound of wind can still be faintly heard.

EXT. AERIAL SHOT--DAY--SKY--OCEAN

Returning to the bird's-eye POV as the camera has continued its slow descent, closer toward the water. Still drifting, the speed of floating has increased. As we draw closer to the water, more definite aspects and details of the ocean's surface come into view. Slowly the camera tilts up and we see, off in the far distance, what looks to be an island, a volcano in its center, a thin wisp of cloud willowing from its cratered peak, trailing up into the sky. The sound of rushing wind grows steadily louder.

(INSERT)

Return to the closed human eye, twitching from dream. The sound of rushing wind continues to be heard.

EXT. AERIAL SHOT--DAY--SKY--ISLAND

The bird's-eye POV continues as the camera's descent from above approaches the island, ever nearer. Trees, rock formations, beaches, inlets, waves surrounding the land all begin to take shape and to grow in focus as the camera floats steadily downward. We approach the volcano's peak, fly above it, through its thin smoke plume, and are able to gain a glimpse down into its crater. We circle the peak, gaining a good view of the volcano. The island is small, but beautiful, lush, alive. The sound of wind is much louder.

(INSERT)

Again a shot of the human eye, closed, asleep, but starting to stir, starting to show signs of fluttering. The sleeper is possibly beginning to awaken. We hear the familiar sound of wind rushing by, but suddenly this is replaced by a harsh sound of thumping and banging and crashing.

EXT. AERIAL SHOT--DAY--SKY--ISLAND--TREES

Bird's-eye POV, and we are flying through trees now. They go whizzing by us rapidly. Limbs, branches, leaves of the island's tropical trees clatter and snap all around us as our descent to the island nears its end with a crash landing. The sound of the cacophony is deafening.

(INSERT)

Our familiar shot of the human eye--asleep, closed, dreaming--suddenly jars awake. The eyelid flutters open. We hear a surprised gasp for breath.

EXT. ISLAND--DAY

The camera's bird's-eye POV comes to an end, with the crashing and clattering and splintering and breaking of tree limbs and the sound of earth giving way.

INT. BEDROOM--DAY

David jumps awake in bed, pulling himself quickly upright and letting out a little yell of surprise. The room is bare and sterile looking--white walls, with no windows or door. In the room there is only a bed and a single chair at the foot of the bed. Jack sits in the chair, and he smiles, noticing David is now awake.

Jack is an older gentleman, dressed comfortably but with care and attention to detail. He wears a tweed jacket, a tie, and wool pants. In his mouth is clenched a pipe, which he will remove, and hold, and replace in his mouth, and light, and relight, and puff on occasionally throughout. He holds a cane/walking stick. He speaks with a crisp yet tender voice of a learned British gentleman. He is hushed, calm, ever refined.

David is middle-aged, going gray at his temples, and is dressed in hospital whites (at the outset). His accent (and attitude) when he speaks shows him to be an American. He is flustered, confused, with a slight tinge of irritation, irritability, and impatience simmering just below his surface, barely kept in check.

JACK

(smiling)

Well...there you are. The sleeper awakes.

DAVID

(short of breath)

What?.... Where am I?....

JACK

I could explain that to you, or I could show you. Personally, I think the latter would be more effective. And certainly much more beautiful. You really should see it. This place is wonderful.

DAVID

(looking around him at the bare, minimal surroundings)

This place? What is this place? Where am I? What's going on? Who are you?

JACK

Well, no, not this place, particularly. It's a bit spartan, even for my tastes, I suppose. And one thing at a time, please. (He chuckles pleasurably.) I mean out there. Outside. The island. It really is lovely. But... I should show you. I tell you what, you gather yourself together, take some time, feel refreshed, and I'll meet you just outside. How does that sound?

DAVID

Huh?

JACK

Very good then. Yes, just outside. It's all set, then. Only a moment, sir, and it will all be explained. You really must see the island. Stunningly beautiful.

DAVID

Island?....

JACK

Yes. Really quite lovely. I'll be just outside, then.

David looks around him and notices there is no door or windows in the room. He appears confused.

DAVID

Outside?.... What?....

Suddenly Jack is gone, leaving David alone in the room.

EXT. ISLAND--DAY--CLEARING

The camera's view takes in a slow, measured, deliberate pan of the tropical island view. The beach. The waves crashing in on the rocks and the sand in the distance. The trees swaying. The sound of an island breeze. The calls of various local birds, monkeys, insects, and other island wildlife. The natural decoration of island flora and fauna. The place is a paradise. The scene is naturally beautiful, gentle, and relaxing.

As the camera continues its sweep, taking in the lush scenery, we see Jack sitting peacefully in a clearing, in the same chair he had been sitting in previously inside the room. He puffs on his pipe, contentedly. His face suddenly lights up, and he stands with the aid of his walking stick.

JACK

Ahhh...there you are. Feeling much better now, yes? (He chuckles gently.)

David enter the scene, walking toward Jack. David is dressed now--comfortably, casually--and still appears to be confused and disoriented. But he seems calmer now, his anger and frustration have dissipated for the moment.

DAVID

Yes, thank you. I think.... (He reaches forward to shake Jack's hand.) Thank you. But.... I'm David, by the way.

JACK

Oh, of course, David. A pleasure to meet you. (He takes David's hand in the handshake, smiling, always congenial.) And so many questions, I'm sure.

David looks at Jack quizzically. The handshake is still held as David sizes up the old gentleman, studying him. A look of familiarity crosses David's face. A faint smile forms on his lips.

DAVID

Have we met? I'm sorry, but...I feel as if I know you. From somewhere. I've seen you, at least.... But for the life of me....

JACK

Oh, well, now that I wouldn't know. I suppose it's possible. Yes, quite. I'm Jack, by the way.

David still holds the handshake with Jack. The two men look at one another warmly, but David's smile is sly, as if an awareness is slowly dawning on him.

DAVID

Jack?....

JACK

(smiling)

Yes. Well...as my close friends call me.

DAVID

(returning the smile)

Wait a minute. I know who you are! I recognize you. "Jack." That's your nickname. You're C.S. Lewis!

JACK

(laughing gently)

Yes. Oh my dear, man, yes. I'm afraid I'm been "found out," as they say. Quite right. Clive Staples Lewis, sir. My good friend, David. But, please, do call my Jack. I insist my friends call me Jack.

DAVID

Oh my God! C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. Oxford professor. One of the original Inklings. Friend of Professor Tolkien. Oh my God! I recognize you from your picture on the book jackets. And from Wikipedia. Are you kidding me? (He laughs, now looking at Jack warmly.) What in the world are you doing here? How are you here? How am I here? (He pauses, looking around him, incredulous.) Where is "here," anyway? What is this place?

JACK

(gently chuckling)

Oh my, well....

DAVID

And, professor Lewis..."Jack"...with all due respect, please don't say again something like, "All in good time, old boy." This is a good time to explain things. This is the time to start answering some questions. No time like the present.

JACK

Well, yes, I suppose you're right, David. There is no time like the present. And it seems you've hit on the very theme of this place. Right from the start, too. Very commendable. Very good. Yes...some answers. You deserve some answers to your questions. You've been more than patient. This is a lot to take in, I'm sure. (Jack pauses and looks around, puffing leisurely on his pipe. He looks at David.) Shall we walk, then? A bit of fresh tropical air should do our lungs some good, I would think. Fortifying, and all that. Yes, let's.... Come along, then.

EXT. ISLAND--DAY--JUNGLE

As the two begin to walk and talk, the camera follows along with a smooth Steadicam Tracking Shot, through the lush, tangled overgrowth (at times), moving along with the pair amidst the beautiful island scenery. There is a brief, awkward moment of quiet as Jack and David begin their walk. Jack--ever the well-mannered host, it would seem--allows for the natural silence at first, seeing if David would begin with more questions. But when it is apparent that his guest is going to be silent, Jack breaks the quiet between them and begins to speak.

JACK

Yes, well.... Very good, then. The island you are on now goes by the name "Nishinoshima." It's Japanese. Tokyo is... (he points, generally, to the north of them) ...that way, about some 500 miles, or so, I should say.

DAVID

Nishinoshima?....

JACK

Yes. That's it. (He smiles.) It's quite a mouthful, at first. But you've already got it. I do love the Japanese language. Just the very look of its words on the page. The sound of them filling your mouth. Much like musical notes, in a way. But you've got it. Nishinoshima. To the Japanese, it means, "western island." Isn't that nice? Western Island...

DAVID

(as if lost in thought)

Nishinoshima.... That sounds familiar.

JACK

(chuckling gently)

Well, yes, I should say so. You wrote about it just a mere several pages back. "Chapter 2" of all of this. That is if you are, indeed, going by the term, "chapter." Perhaps "Section 2," if you prefer? The second movement of this...testimonial, is it? This critique? This reader's confession? Whatever you'd like to call this bit of writing, I suppose....

David looks at him, dumbfounded. Jack laughs good-naturedly.

JACK

Well, I dare say, David, if you're going to insist on standing there with your mouth open, you had better not be a bit surprised when you catch some flies, as my grandmother used to say.

DAVID

What is this? What's going on here? What is this place, really? Who are you?

JACK

I thought we had established all of that already. Really, David, we can't keep going in circles with our conversation. You're inventing all of this, after all. You're the architect of this piece, the writer, the controlling consciousness. I am merely your humble Virgil, after all, here to escort you:

"Midway in our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost...." (15)

DAVID

Dante's Inferno. The famous opening lines of Dante's Inferno. My God!... (he laughs) ... Professor Lewis is quoting the opening lines of Dante's Inferno to me. I wish I could record this. No one's going to believe it! Where's my phone?...

JACK

(smiling gently at David as they continue their walk)

Yes, well.... We don't have those here. Not allowed. You'll find you can get by rather easily without.

DAVID

Nishinoshima.... The little island that could. (He laughs. And then stops abruptly.) Wait a minute. Are you implying that this is Hell? Am I in Hell, now, you being my Virgil here to guide me? Is that what you're saying. Oh my God... Am I dead? Did I die?

JACK

David.... David, calm down. No, it's not like that. It's not what you're thinking. You haven't died, for goodness sake. You're not dead. You're merely writing. It happens. You should know this. You're fine.

DAVID

Is this Hell, though? Is Nishinoshima Hell?

JACK

Well, I didn't say that, did I? I suppose it all depends on your perspective.

DAVID

My perspective?

JACK

Yes. On the way you choose to approach it. The way you decide to look at it.

DAVID

What do you mean? Is this Heaven, then? Am in Heaven? Is that what Nishinoshima is--Heaven?

JACK

Come, now. I didn't say that, either, did I?

DAVID

(looking around him as they continue to walk)

Well, I could imagine this looking like Heaven, I suppose. I don't know. It's all rather paradisiacal.

JACK

(looking around also, and smiling)

Yes, it is beautiful, isn't it? But that's not why you're here. You see, around here, on these shores, we like to refer to Nishinoshima as "The Island of Yesterday's Tomorrow."

DAVID

The Island of Yesterday's Tomorrow?....

JACK

Yes, that's it.

There is a brief pause as you can see on David's face that he's working through the mental wordplay.

DAVID

Well...that would mean..."The Island of Today," then, wouldn't it?

JACK

Why, yes it does. Very good, David. The Island of Today, if you prefer. That is much easier to say. Has more of a ring to it, I suppose.

DAVID

Okay. Nishinoshima. "The Island of Today." But.... I'm still not sure why I'm here.

JACK

You're here, after all, because of what you're writing about. You're here because you are a reader--and a serious, conscientious one, at that. You're here because of... (he chuckles wryly) ... well, I suppose, for want of a more precise term, because of your teeming existential crisis over the reading of Mr. Pynchon's little book that you've wrestled with for decades now.

DAVID

Oh, that.... (sarcastically) I thought you said I wasn't in Hell....

JACK

(smiling)

Oh, now, my dear, David, you must get over this. You must stop thinking this way about a book. After all, it's only a piece of writing. And that's why you're here. To try to help you see that. To get... (he pauses) ...perspective, if you will. To gain some new insight. To learn something about yourself, perhaps. That is, after all, why you're writing all of this, isn't it? Nishinoshima, as it turns out, is an island for unread books. Its shores and jungles and rocky precipices and alcoves serve as a natural storehouse--a home--for all the hundreds, thousands, probably millions of books, at this point, that go unread every year. All bought or borrowed with nothing but the best of intentions, of course. But...unread, anyway. Begun and--for whatever reasons--abandoned. Or never opened. Never looked at. Untouched. Unread. Forever. This is where they come now. This is their home. And it's growing, perceptibly, every day, all the time. More and more unread books. And that is why you're here. To confront Gravity's Rainbow once and for all. (He chuckles.) And to just read the damned thing, for God's sake.

EXT. ISLAND--BEACH--ROCKY BREAKWATER

Suddenly, the sound of the island's surrounding jungle wildlife (birds, monkeys, insects) is overtaken by the sound of the ocean and of waves washing in upon the beach and upon a rocky outcropping. The two have continued walking the whole time during their conversation and now step out into the clear, leaving the trees of the jungle-canopy behind and strolling out onto the open beach and onto a natural breakwater of rocks jutting out into the water and the waves. The ocean is vast and magnificent around them. Behind them, at various times as the camera continues to follow their conversation--not moving now, as they take a moment to rest upon the beach and upon the rocks--the island's central volcano can be glimpsed behind them, always looming, its peak towering above them, sending up a steady trail of smoke.

JACK

(sighing and laughing jovially)

Ahhh...yes, here we are. How lovely. Now, this is not something you see every day.

DAVID

No, to be sure. Not where I come from, anyway.

JACK

Yes. Nor I.

David grabs a handful of sand and stares at it, opens his palm, and watches it sift slowly through his fingers. He stares out at the ocean. Meanwhile, Jack has carefully made his way to a nearby outcropping of rock which forms the base of a narrow natural breakwater jutting out from the island's southern shore. Carefully, Jack sits down. He rummages in his jacket pockets for his pipe, his pouch of tobacco, and matches. He goes about the practiced ritual of preparing and smoking his pipe as they continue talking. During the conversation David will eventually find a spot of sand on the beach and sit down, close to the rock where Jack is sitting.

DAVID

So, an island of unread books?.... That's interesting. Who else knows about this?

JACK

Oh, many. Many like yourself, I should say. Those who are troubled by not finishing a good book, or a challenging book, anyway. A book that they hold, perhaps, a perverse love/hate relationship with. Is this striking any bells for you?...

DAVID

So, this is some sort of penance, after all, then? Some sort of punishment--or withheld reward, anyway--for being a "bad reader"? Go sit in the corner, David, and think about what you've done.

JACK

No. No, David. Not at all. You really must get past this notion of blame and fault in regards to reading and/or not reading a book. My Lord, one would think you were Catholic. This game of assigning guilt--such a thing doesn't apply here. There's no one to blame. You're not a "bad reader," David. As a point of fact, my dear boy, you're quite a very good reader. You know that, yes? You're quite astute when it comes to art, and to books and writers, in this case. You pay attention to not only what is being written but how it's being written. Those are good traits. Interesting traits. Good writing matters to you. You understand the importance of good writing. And so it quite naturally bothers you when you struggle with a piece of writing that is--well, reportedly anyway--considered important, considered a classic, and considered to be worth reading.

DAVID

(after a brief pause)

What are you doing here, then, Professor Lewis?

JACK

"Jack," please....

DAVID

Jack. Yes. What are you doing here, then, Jack? On an island like this? What brings a writer and reader--a veritable scholar--like you to a place like this?

JACK

As I said, think of me as your guide, your Virgil....

DAVID

Great. I mean, no offense, Professor Lewis--Jack--but I get as my Virgil on Nishinoshima, this Island of Yesterday's Tomorrow, this land of unread books, the writer who is perhaps the late-20th century's greatest Christian apologist? What did I do to deserve that honor? (He laughs and rolls his eyes. And then, sarcastically.) How come I couldn't get a writer like Henry Miller appointed as my guide?

JACK

(smiling slyly)

Oh, dear Lord. Well... I've taken a peek at your Appendices, here, and you haven't tried to read Miller, have you? Rather surprised you've managed to leave him off your list, I must say.

DAVID

What?... (and then as if it suddenly dawns on him, sheepishly) .... Oh, wait a minute. Wait....

JACK

(a smile twinkling from the corner of his eyes as he draws on his pipe)

Yes. Am I to be offended that you didn't see fit to make your way through all of my dear old Narnia books?

DAVID

(embarrassed)

Oh...Mr. Lewis. It's not that. It's just....

JACK

No need to apologize, son. Good Lord, my skin is thicker than that. And I entirely understand. The whole affair does--I suppose for some--get a little long in the tooth, the further along it goes. Believe me, if one writes long enough you hear much worse criticism than that. It's quite all right. But... in answer to your question, one of those "Unfinished Authors" of yours was summarily appointed to you. (Laughing heartily.) I seem to have drawn the short straw, as you might say.

DAVID

(sarcastically)

I'm surprised I didn't get Pynchon, himself.

JACK

Ha! Take my word for it, you wouldn't have wanted him.

DAVID

Well, I would have had a few questions for him, that's for sure.

JACK

I'd say you've had a few questions for me. Besides, I don't think anyone properly knows where he is, of course. Rather famously reclusive. Preferring, instead, to stay "out of the limelight," I believe the saying goes...

DAVID

Yes, to put it mildly.

JACK

(begins feeling about his jacket, patting the pockets, as if in search of something)

Oh, now, let's see.... Where is it? Where have I put it? A small clipping I was going to share with you. (He reaches inside the liner pocket of the breast of his jacket and then smiles.) Ahh, yes. Here it is. Just a moment....

Jack unfolds a small piece of paper, clipped from a journal, and holds it in his hands to read aloud.

JACK

I came across this the other day in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Quite good. Made me think of sharing it with you, anyway. Rather apropos, at the moment, I should say. Let's see, once I get my eyeglasses on, that is.... (He adjusts his glasses on his nose and begins to read.) This is dated 2004, 8th of February, from a Mr. Arthur Salm, about our dear friend, Mr. Pynchon: "The man simply chooses not to be a public figure," Mr. Salm writes, "an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet--the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining--the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV." (16)

Jack laughs loud and long at what he has read from the news clipping. David only stares silently, again open-mouthed.

JACK

Oh my, that is wonderful. I must say, that's rather delightful. Can you imagine?....

He laughs some more. David is still unresponsive, at first. Eventually he breaks his silence.

DAVID

Are you trying to tell me you know who Paris Hilton is? The late-20th century's greatest Christian apologist has a working knowledge of Paris Hilton? What the hell is going on here?

JACK
(still laughing and smiling)

I beg your pardon?

DAVID

Nothing. Never mind.... Look, can I ask you a question, Jack?

JACK

Of course you can, David. I'm here to help you.

DAVID

I have to ask you--since I seem to now have the opportunity--about that famous quote attributed to you. You know the one....

JACK

I'm afraid I know of several.

DAVID

(reciting from memory)

The one that goes: "We read to know we're not alone."

JACK

(smiling knowingly)

Ahh, yes. That old chestnut....

DAVID

Can I be blunt, Professor Lewis?

JACK

Oh, I would appreciate that.

DAVID

Well... I mean, it's not that I find anything particularly disagreeable with the saying, I suppose. I mean...it's a nice thought. It's a warm sentiment. And it's partly true, I guess, from a certain way of looking at it. From a certain perspective, as you say. (He smiles nervously.) It's just.... Professor Lewis, I just don't know that I agree with it wholeheartedly.

JACK

Well, that's good.

David continues quickly, as if he didn't even hear Jack's reply.

DAVID

I mean, yes, reading is--or can be, certainly--a communal act. Certainly there are Reading Groups and classes that meet and discuss books. And there is a universality to the act itself, where two people on opposite ends of the earth can both be reading the same thing and experiencing the same responses from the reading. But... I don't know.... Reading is also, primarily, such a solitary act. Don't you think? It's such an act done in silence, when one is alone with a book and an author, talking with the author, conversing one-on-one, the two of them. In private. Alone. I think reading can be--maybe even should be--a lonely act. It might be one of the most lonesome acts we have, aside from writing, interestingly.... (It finally registers with David what Jack has said earlier.) .... Wait. What? Did you say, "Good"?

JACK
(chuckling)

Yes. "Good." That's good that you don't agree with that saying wholeheartedly.

DAVID

Wait. What do you mean? You're glad I disagree with you?

JACK

But you're not disagreeing with me, David. Because I never said that.

DAVID

What? But you....

JACK

(interrupting)

No. I never actually said "We read to know we're not alone." Those words don't belong to me. Oh, certainly, I know they sound good. Such a saying is all very lovely, I suppose, on the countless memes floating around these days. A part of me even half wishes I had said it. Think of the royalties, my boy. (He chuckles emptily.) No, I didn't say it, though. My fictional self said it, however. Credit the playwright, William Nicholson, who had me mouth those words in his stage play and then in his eventual film, Shadowlands. About me and Joy... Yes....

Jack stares off in the distance, his eyes grow far away, misty. Finally he smiles again.

JACK

Lovely bit, that, I must say, seeing Joy brought to life by the lovely Debra Winger. And then there's myself, being played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Well, it's not every day, you know, one is portrayed by Hannibal Lecter.

Once again, David is silent for a moment, open-mouthed, staring dumbly at Jack.

DAVID

Paris Hilton. Memes. Debra Winger. Anthony Hopkins. And Hannibal Lecter.... Oh my God, there is so much to unpack here. (He shakes his head.) If I wasn't standing here right now, hearing it for myself, I wouldn't believe it. No one is going to believe this.

JACK

(as if he didn't hear what David has just said)

But for what it's worth, David, I agree with your previous assessment about reading being a lonely act. I believe you're on to something. I mean, it's strangely almost an outgrowth of your earlier notion of anthropomorphizing a book--giving it the attributes of a woman, for instance, as you started to do earlier and as you'll explore even further along in this piece here. You seem to find the act of reading a book much the same as you see the act of forming a relationship with another human being--even though the two acts are so different and so totally at odds with one another. On the one hand, you must be willing to open yourself up and share yourself intimately with another person. To be at one with another. On the other hand, you must be willing to close yourself off and to shut out the world, to experience the world offered to only you by the author. To be at one with yourself, in other words. Union and disunion. Order and chaos. In your earlier discussion in this...essay, book, whatever this piece of writing of yours is becoming now...you almost began to draw parallels between the two acts, to metaphorically show that they are the same, though different. Quite interesting, indeed. Yes... (Jack pauses, drawing again on his pipe, sizing David up.) How remarkable, this notion of togetherness and separateness. Two sides of the same coin, as it were. A perfect dialectic. Together and alone. And both fueled by the same desire--to feel love. There is loneliness, for you--the same loneliness in the act of reading a book--in the very act of falling in love. The two are one and the same. (He pauses again.) To read is to be alone. And to fall in love, you are saying, is also to feel this same sense of loneliness. Or maybe not even the same "sense" of it. Maybe it is, quite simply, one and the same loneliness. Extraordinary, David. Absolutely extraordinary.... Perhaps your new meme should read: "We read to know we are alone." Yes, perhaps. Quite right.... Do you mind if I make a note of this?

At this moment, as Jack finishes this last thought--and quite unexpectedly--a large, over-sized octopus, named Grigori, lurches up from the waves that are washing against the rocky outcropping where Jack sits. Lunging awkwardly, swinging its slimy, ropelike tentacles about, the crustacean manages to grab hold of the rockface on the breakwater and pull itself toward the unsuspecting Oxford professor, who is too busy pontificating on the dialectical nature of love and aloneness to notice that he is no longer alone on the rocks. With one sucker-covered tentacle, Grigori reaches toward Jack, wraps one of his eight arms around the waist of the old writer/Virgil, and pulls Jack off from the rock cliff into the foam and the spray of the crashing waves.

JACK

(through teeth clenched determinedly on the stem of his pipe)

Oh, bloody hell....

Watching the scene unfold, it takes only a matter of seconds. David witnesses it, stunned and unable to react or to respond in time to save Jack's life. Immediately, David jumps to his feet, standing alone in the sand, watching as Jack disappears with Grigori below the surface of the ocean.

(INSERT)

The camera's view quickly moves directly in front of David. He is centered directly in the frame, standing alone on the beach, watching helplessly. As described in the pre-production pitch as, "Real Hitchock/Vertigo by-way-of Spielberg/Jaws kind of stuff," the camera dolly-zooms in on David's amazed and horrified expression.

DAVID

WHAT THE FUCK?!

(INSERT)

Suddenly, we see again--as before--a human eye shown in close-up, closed, asleep. Faint twitching behind the eyelid can minutely be detected, as if the eye is experiencing rapid eye movement while dreaming. Hold momentarily. The sound of the ocean's crashing waves on the rocks can still be heard. The eye continues to move and to flutter. Slowly, the sleeper is beginning to waken, and the eye flutters open.

INT. BEDROOM--DAY

A young man jumps awake in bed, pulling himself quickly upright and letting out a little yell of surprise. The sound of the waves and the ocean is gone now. It is silent. The room is bare and sterile looking--white walls, beige carpet, a window with lace curtains along the far wall, rays of sunlight spilling in through the window and through the thin, gossamer curtains. In the room there is only a bed and a single wooden chair sitting in the spill of sunlight close to the window--a book lays spread open, face down, on the chair, bathed in the light. The young man breathes deeply, shaking himself awake, looking around slowly, gaining a bearing on his surroundings and on himself. He buries his face in his hands.

FADE OUT--"FIN"

FADE TO BLACK

*******

____________________

* 11 *

Pynchon doesn't create characters so much as mechanical men to whom a manic comic impulse or a vague free-floating anguish can attach itself, often in brilliant streams of consciousness.... The risk that Pynchon's fiction runs is boredom, repetition without significant development, elaboration that is no more than compulsiveness. For all its richness and exuberance, V. is more a wonderful, concatenated jigsaw puzzle than an esthetically coherent literary structure. The Crying of Lot 49 is smaller but better built. In Gravity's Rainbow the structure is strained beyond the breaking point. Reading it is often profoundly exasperating; the book is too long and dense; despite the cornucopia of brilliant details and grand themes one's dominant feelings in the last one to two hundred pages are a mounting restlessness, fatigue and frustration. The book doesn't feel "together."

This is a judgment about its form, but let me go a step further. One feels in the end that Pynchon's imagination is so taken with the imagery of Nazi death...that he is driven to make the plot larger and larger, to add more and more characters, to invent increasingly zany comic routines and digressions as a frantic defense against the fear and love of death--the odor of the crematorium, burnt cordite, bombed out minds and bodies, ruins. This all gets out of his control. Pynchon's sensibility and achievement here are limited by the very paranoid traits that he is ostensibly criticizing. The sentimental and comic characters and their mindless pleasures do not have the intended force to counterpoint the theme of death; the druggy, spaced-out comedy becomes too juvenile and self-indulgent to function as a real alternative.

-- Richard Locke (17)

At the outset of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic, I couldn't help but find my mind wandering to the line from Mel Brooks' classic 1974 film, Young Frankenstein, when the frightened village father, anxiously hammering into place residual lumber to cover the windows of his modest little home, finds the time to offer throwaway advice to his wife--all doing so, of course, in the standard movie-language of stereotypical Eastern-European-Yiddish-English: "When monsters are loose, boards must be tight!" (18)

So, what do you do during a virus pandemic? Do you frantically get busy looking for layabout 2x4s, some nails, and a hammer? There is no rule-book for this sort of thing. Quarantined at home--"stuck" at home either with loved ones or by yourself--you have been encouraged [Aside: no...more than "encouraged," you've been "ordered"] to be anti-social, to be private, to stay at home, to limit your time with others, to keep your distance safely, and--basically--to just...kind of...do nothing.

[Aside: It could be worse.]

It was about now that I looked at the bookspines aligned and stacked on my shelves here at home--staring at me accusingly--and I decided one of the things I was going to "get busy" doing was finally dusting off some of them and catching up on some reading. No time like the present, after all:

Franz Kafka's, The Metamorphosis
Sarah Orne Jewett's, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Daniel Defoe's, A Journal of the Plague Year
Michael Ondaatje's, Warlight
Edith Hall's, Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life
Anthony Daniels', I am C-3PO: The Inside Story
Adam Higginbotham's, Midnight at Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
William Lee Miller's, Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography
Mark Cousins', The Story of Film
Noah Stryker's, The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
Don DeLillo's, Point Omega
Sarah M. Broom's, The Yellow House
Philip Roth's, Nemesis

I made it through a handful of the books that I initially pulled down from my bookshelf, most disappearing quickly, some requiring a little more time. But still, not a bad reading list, all told. Not a bad way to spend the time, if one has the time to spend.

And then it hit me. I saw the book, its familiar light-blue spine glaring at me (as it has for years--decades). And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it:

Thomas Pynchon's, Gravity's Rainbow

I had met my Waterloo years before. I had been bested, and I had admitted defeat. I had (or so I told myself over all these long years) confronted my strengths and weaknesses; I had made peace with my limitations; and I had moved on to other authors and to other books. But here I was at home, stuck at home--"ordered" to be at home--with nowhere else (literally) to go and not much of anything else (literally) to do.

So, what was I waiting for? An invitation? I threw down the gauntlet, then and there, and declared a rematch. I picked up the book that had beaten me 20 years before, and I turned, once more, to its first page and to its familiar first sentence: "A screaming comes across the sky." And I dived in headfirst and started swimming.

And here's the first thing I found this time around: I didn't drown. I surprisingly held my own right from the start, amidst Pynchon's sea of words and ideas, and his cast of hundreds (literally, at last count that I saw online, roughly 400 characters--give or take--throughout), and his confusing passages of mathspeak/sciencespeak (written in passages that--honestly--only physicists and engineers could reasonably grasp), and his (satirical, I know, but still somewhat glaring in 2020 America) instances of misogyny/racism/soft-core pornography/child abuse (physical, emotional, sexual, etc.), and his meandering plots, and his ventures into subplots with no destinations, and his scenes of late-60's/early-70's "free-to-be" hippiesh holdovers--complete with drugs, free love, counter-cultural references--and his playful free-association with Cold War politics and paranoia, and his (everywhere) freefloatingwaterfall of pages and pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness musing.

I was staying afloat for quite a while during the early parts of the book. I was keeping up with it, and I was not giving in. I was impressed with myself--and with the book, to be honest. But eventually (and, really, when considering the novel's length, not all that far in, I guess--maybe around page 200-250, or so) all of my strength and my fresh outlook and my attempts to stay positive and to stay focused and motivated began to weaken and to show signs of breaking and maybe even collapsing.

I began to hit a wall. And I wasn't very far into the book. Granted, I made it much further than my first attempt some 20 years prior. But already I was showing signs of lagging--once again--and of questioning just what the hell I was doing all of this for. What is the point of it, anyway? I mean really?

This wasn't good. All signs pointed to failure again. I wasn't up for it. While I had come a long way over the past 20 years--a lot of seismic/Pangeaic-like changes in my life, a lot of growing up and growing into the person I had finally, fully become as an adult, a lot of paradigm-shifting, and a lot of questioning, a lot of evolving--I still, perhaps, wasn't quite there. Although I had read a lot over the past 20 years and had challenged myself with some damned good books--some of the best and most thought-provoking writing I had encountered so far in my life--and although I had emerged (I think, anyway) as a confident, clearheaded, careful thinker/reader, I was still...still...finding this book of Pynchon's to be my "bridge too far," my Hastings Cutoff/Donner Pass, my Pickett's Charge, my Vietnam. It had the stink of defeat all over it again. And I was disgusted with myself, with the novel, with my decision that I had made to waste my time--this time of all times--when I could possibly be spending my quarantine-time on something more productive and (almost certainly) more fun.

It was Waterloo all over again.

So I set Gravity's Rainbow down. One more time. For a while, anyway. I would just give it a rest, I told myself. Give myself a rest. Redirect my energies and read something else. Recharge. And then try again, perhaps. And just to be sure of this, I kept my bookmark in its place (around page 250, or so) knowing full well that I didn't want to do something as foolish as remove it and lose my place altogether.

If I had done that, I knew, all my efforts up to that point would have been for nothing, and that would have been the end of it. And I would never try again.

But I simply had to take a breather, I said to myself, if for no other reason than just to read something that was a little more pleasing, maybe, and a little easier to digest, and a little less headache-inducing, and a little more rewarding at the end of the day. I set Gravity's Rainbow aside, and turned to other things. (At least for a while, anyway.)

____________________

* 12 *

The novels of Thomas Pynchon seem to take place in a vast, unfathomable cyclotron. Characters, ideas, metaphors, styles, pains, ecstasies, assorted objects from the Pyramids to paper clips all whirl about at enormous velocity. They collide, split into new forms, or suddenly decay, leaving behind only enigmatic smiles.... And now Gravity's Rainbow.... It is a funny, disturbing, exhausting and massive novel, mind-fogging in its range and permutations, its display of knowledge and virtuosity--a metaphysical, phenomenological, technological Mad Comic. The author seems to have read and understood everything from quantum mechanics, probability theory and engineering manuals to the labels on bottles of 1920s Schloss Vollrads, Tarot cards and rock lyrics. This, and much more, Pynchon catalogues and tickles into fantasies so elaborately detailed that most of his readers will come away feeling illiterate in the terms of the 20th century.... Even more than Pynchon's previous novels, Gravity's Rainbow is about man the symbol-making animal desperately trying to build a protective system of meaning over his head while at the same time blind technology increases the odds that something will bash his head in.

-- R.Z. Sheppard (19)

But that "breather" of mine didn't last very long. I had to keep going. I had to keep fighting the good fight. I had to keep trying and to keep pushing ahead--a page, two pages, ten, thirty, fifty, a scene, a section, a chapter, the first half of the book, the second half of the book, moving forward, forcing myself (at times). Finishing it.

I had to keep going, because the thing with Pynchon's books is--or, I should say one of the things with his books is--if you stop too long you will forget too much, because there is simply way too much to remember. If you put the book down for any extended interval you have automatically increased the chances of forgetting specific events and information, misrembering details and characters and plot strands, and growing confused and frustrated, and eventually quitting. It is best to just keep going. I knew this both from online discussion sites that I'd consulted and from my own past experience.

There is something undeniable about Gravity's Rainbow. More than any book I have ever read or have ever tried to read it brings me back and keeps me trying. And I can't explain what this "something" is. Not to anyone else, and maybe not even to myself. Not fully. Maybe not ever.

I don't know what it is. But there it is.

For some reason I have to stay with this impossibly frustrating, magnificent, maddening, funny, moving, boring, thrilling, laughably stupid, mind-alteringly intelligent, lowbrow, highbrow, philosophically complex, full-of-shit/work-of-genius, (Edward Mendelson's) "encyclopedic narrative" masterpiece--all the way to the end. Even if it means the end of me.

[Aside: "It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning----- And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (20)]

____________________

* 13 *

"The point is," cutting off Gustav's usually indignant scream, " a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn't even have a sense of humor. I tell you," shaking his skinny old fist, "there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled--listen!"

-- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, Part 3: "In the Zone" (21)

What is wrong with the notion of spending your time with a book that you, perhaps, don't always like? Oh sure...you see the good in it, you admit to moments of its beauty, pages that promise great things, unforgettable scenes and passages of dialogue that stay lodged in your memory, the breathtaking overarching artistry of all that's accomplished in it. But still there are those times that (although you love a book for all its lovable reasons) you perhaps don't like it very much. In fact you might even hate it. What is wrong with this?

What is wrong with maybe not being entertained by a book? What if at times (much of the time, maybe) it isn't fun to read it? What if you find yourself not really connecting with the characters all the time, maybe even confused about who all the characters are and what they're supposedly up to and why? What if you get bored with a book? What do you do then? How are you supposed to feel about that? And particularly if these moments of boredom and frustration and confusion and hopeless rejection are counterbalanced with a sense of awe and fascination at all the promise that the book holds, all the moments of humor and beauty in its pages, all the sheer wonder of the fact--held in your hands and held within its crude/exalted poetry--that the book exists in the first place?

How do you answer that? How do you deal with a love-hate relationship with a book--a book that is, by all rights, considered "classic"...albeit with some admitted complications? A book that is considered timeless and worth spending time with...but is admittedly difficult? A book that you perhaps love to hate. (But you don't hate it--not really). A book that you maybe hate to love, at times. And yet you do love it. You can't deny it, nor should you.

What do you do with a book like that?

Why would anyone write a book like that? I believe this is a fair question to ask. As is its accompanying question: Why would anyone read a book like that?

The only answer to these questions I can fairly give is that a writer might feel compelled to write a book like this, and a reader might be inevitably drawn to read a book like this, because--what with all of its world-building and world-demolishing, fraught with inherent anxieties and awfulnesses and adorations--a book is nothing more than a person disguised in pages. I believe we do this with a book because a book is like a person, and we do this (or should do this) with the people in our lives all the time--the people we love and try to love, and the people who we wish (sometimes so desperately) would do something as crazy as love us back.

Books aren't perfect. People aren't perfect. Love isn't perfect. It's a wrestling match, much of the time. And it's okay to wrestle with a book. It's okay to be confused by it. It's okay to struggle with it. That's how you figure it out. That's how you get down to the book's bedrock, down to its base materials. Only in such a place can you begin to try to understand what the author really wants you to understand. Only in such a place can you begin to try to comprehend just what is really meant with the meaning between the words.

We live in an age of relative comfort, for most of us, anyway. We live at a time in history when the world is literally at our fingertips and can be accessed with lightning-speed. We have computers in our pockets and in our hands almost 24/7. We don't know what to do with ourselves. We're frustrated easily. We're angered easily. We find fault easily. We grow complacent easily. We grow listless easily. We give up easily and move on to other things easily. We don't seem to really know what it is we want and who we are. And yet we also don't really seem to know what it is we don't want and what we want to be.

We just know we would like things to be easier, and we would like things to make sense.

We are frustrated with ourselves, with our lives, with the constant barrage of contentment vs. discontentment that bombards us daily, constantly, without stop. We are bored easily--too easily--with everything and everyone (or so we say). And we don't know how to handle our dissatisfaction with life and with people. We don't know what to do with disappointment or how to handle it. And so we get bored...and then we don't know what to do with our boredom or how to handle our boredom.

[Aside: And this, by the way, is a recurring theme of postmodern/contemporary literature, this notion of boredom in our everyday contemporary lives and what to do with it. For a primer on this theme, check out some of these postmodernist writers and their novels: David Foster Wallace/The Pale King; Joseph Heller/Something Happened; Lucy Ellmann/Ducks, Newburyport; and Charlie Kaufman/Antkind.]

We don't have to think too much, if we don't really want to. We don't have to form our own opinions too much, if we don't really want to. If we don't like something or someone--for whatever reason (and what's more, we don't even have to really have a reason)--we can hit "dislike," blue thumb down, swipe left, block, delete. And then it's on to something or someone else.

It's easy to do. Way too easy.

I've done this, with persons that I've struggled to like or to love or to forgive; with friends who have made me angry; with total strangers who I find myself in opposition; with groups of people that leave me feeling divided; with political, religious, and social organizations that stir up hatred and ire, on a whim; with social media; with the media, in general; with headlines, and sound bites, and real news, and supposed "fake news," and all the news in-between somewhere, and a world leader who can't tell the difference (and, what's more, doesn't seem to care about the difference) between real and make-believe; and with a country that appears--way too often--to be coming apart, piece by piece, at the seams.

I've taken part in it myself. I know. I've joined in, to an extent. I'm guilty of doing it. I've discarded people, turned my back on them and on institutions that disagree with me or that make me disagreeable. I have quit on people. I have stopped reading books once I've started. I've given in, and I've "given it all I can give," I say, and I've given up. (It's so easy.)

But I've also done the opposite. I've struggled with people. I've fought with people. I've refused to give up on people. In certain situations, I've held on, and on, and on, and on...(much longer than any reasonable person would have or should have). In some relationships that I've found myself in over the years (and in some cases you may have to stretch the meaning of the word "relationship" like Play-Doh to its breaking point) it's been a struggle. A constant pushing and pulling. ("Come here.... No, go away.") For years, decades, at times. (It feels like a lifetime.) The pushing apart, only to pull one another back in silent, subtle ways. The flying apart. The drifting together. Disunion and union. Entropy (the natural order of things which leads to chaos and the breaking apart of order) followed by negentropy (the natural coming back together of things and the reestablishment of order). Elemental forces causing things to fly apart, while other elemental forces at work to reunite these same things. Pushing, pulling, straining, struggling.

Why would anyone do that? W hy would any two people put themselves through all of that?

I think, in those instances, it was quite simply because we thought we couldn't let it all entirely go to nothingness. What was all of that for, then? we can't help but ask. It's difficult. It's complicated. It's confusing. It's maddening. That person you see such beauty in, at other times you are consumed only with seeing her ugliness. It's all around you and all you can see. That person who you hate (or convince yourself that you hate), at other times all you can think about is how much you love her. Or did.

"But look at what she's done," the voices insist. "All that's been said and done. All this time."

"Yes," you answer, "I know, but...."

And therein lies the tale. "Yes, I know, but...." Difficult relationships with difficult people can teach you more than you ever knew about who you are, and the person you want to be, and all that it is possible for you, maybe--somehow--to forgive. Difficult people also show you how to move on. They show you exactly when and how to stop and to walk away, if it's apparent there is no other reasonable choice. But difficult people show you how to love them, too--faults and all--if you're willing and patient and open enough to let them. But you have to be willing and patient and open enough to let them. (Which is not always easy or fun.) Similarly, difficult books teach you how to read them. You just have to be willing to learn--if you are comfortable enough to sit back, and to reserve judgment, and to let the book slowly reveal itself to you. (Which is not always easy or fun, either.)

This notion of reading only for entertainment's sake is a stubborn holdover from our childhood. From our earliest ages we learn the idea that art--books, stories, poems, movies, songs, etc.--exists solely to make us smile and to feel good. To make us laugh. To make us satisfied with the antique pablum, "And they all lived happily ever after...." Art is there to prop up our escapist worldview: All is in its place and as it should be. We need that confirmation when we're young. We don't need it in quite the same way when we're 50 years old. When we are children learning to read, books exist for our sake. When we have grown older and have learned to deepen our reading and our understanding of the world, we learn (sometimes in a bitter contest of will and ego) that we exist for art's sake. It's a switch, a reversal. And if you don't or can't make that reversal, then you, as a reader, will spend the rest of your adult life still under the mistaken notion that art (a book, for example) is solely there to serve you. To make you happy. To make you feel better about yourself, perhaps. To keep you entertained. To pass your time. To fill your bored and dissatisfied existence with the notion that you are fine and that everything is fine and that nothing could be better.

When, often, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Sometimes art is ugly. Sometimes art is brutal, and painful, and shockingly disturbing, and upsetting. Sometimes you hate it. Sometimes you want to turn away from it. And sometimes you do turn away from it (and are meant to). And sometimes you turn back toward the art (and are meant to). As a way of example: For my entire life, I've been under the impression that I had a fairly complete understanding of the terms "anti-war film." A lot of cinema, over the years, has been dedicated to that genre, after all. But it wasn't until recently, watching two films (both of them for the first time), that everything I thought I knew and understood about the "anti-war" film was upended. I had heard of both films--interestingly, they had both been released in 1985--but I'd simply never taken the time (or simply never had the opportunity, perhaps) to watch them. Until now.

French documentarian Claude Lanzmann and his monumental documentary opus, Shoah, is a nearly 10-hour slow-slide into the grueling oblivion of the Nazi's "final solution" of its infamous death camps. Similarly, Soviet filmmaker Elem Klimov offered his harrowing glimpse, Come and See, through the gaze of his teenage male protagonist at the brutal annihilation of the rural Belarusian countryside from the incendiary hands of Nazi forces during W.W. II.

Two films, two works of art, dealing with difficult, challenging subject matter. Each film told in its own ways, in brutal imagery and construction of scene upon scene upon scene of unrelenting, horrifying ugliness--the worst in humanity. It's admittedly difficult to watch these movies. It is painful to watch them. Both films--Shoah and Come and See--will teach you, over the course of their viewing-times, how to watch them. How to understand them. How to make sense of the senselessness in them. How to absorb them. And once you allow the movies to work on this level, once you settle in to them and allow them to work in this way, you will never forget them. And you will understand their purpose. And you will understand why they were made. And why someone might want to watch them.

We need cinema like this--we need art like this--just as much as we need the cinema of Jurassic Park or Toy Story. There is room for it all. And we need music, painting, and writing that makes us feel good and happy and content; there's nothing wrong with that. That's important. But we also need songs, paintings, films, and books that will push us, and push us, and push us, waiting--wanting--for us to push back. To show that we are paying attention. We are invested in the outcome, after all. And to show that we care, or that we want to care, or that we can't care, or that we hate this but that we need this. All at the same time.

We need difficult, challenging, complicated art to show us that we are alive and that we are here to feel love and hate; and that we are willing to experience beauty and ugliness; and that we want to feel comfort and struggle; and that we want to endure and learn and move on and grow. We want to experience the coming together and the falling apart of existence--the natural dissolution of chaos, the pulling at everything from opposite strings into eventual and inevitable disarray; only to be found again and to be brought back together, perhaps, under the weighted hand and the formative force of gravity.

____________________

* 14 *

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
'Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous-
And handled with a Chain -

-- Emily Dickinson, "Much Madness is divinest Sense - " #435 (22)

"This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of Escape. . . ." (23)

The time is short now. He is almost at its end, finally, after all this time. His voice, the only voice he's ever known, has grown thin with his reading every chapter, every page, and sentence, and word. It has taken a long time, and he is tired. But it is almost over now. He pauses to look around him, to memorize once more the room he has memorized so well over the past days, weeks, and months. Has it been years? Just him alone now. Alone with the book, his only companion. The only voice, the chorus of voices ringing from its pages.
But they're not real. Not really. Not anymore. Maybe not ever. Right now it's just him, as it's always been.
But he knows that's not true, either. Wasn't there a time, a day long ago? Was it always like this? Just him, and the book, sitting on a chair by the window, or sitting cross-legged on the floor by the window, or lying on the floor by the window--the sunlight pouring through the shade, the thin gossamer of the lace curtain brushing against his cheek sometimes if he gets too close to it or when the air comes on and blows through the vent, drowning his voice, choking back the words.
It has taken the life of him reading this book aloud, speaking down into the metal floor-grate of the air vent, down into the metal ductwork snaking below the floor and along the walls and above in the ceiling, in the rafters, all around him. His voice traveling through the world around him, sometimes thin and tired--as it is now--sometimes bold and strong, like it was when he was younger. Sitting on a chair by the window, face aimed downward at the carpeted floor, the vent at his feet. Speaking aloud to the room, to himself, and to the ductwork, and to whoever there was to listen.
We read to know we are alone.
But he is aware of something now. Something that maybe he's always known but was only afraid to say to himself. He doesn't want to say it now. He only wants to read, to speak the words, to finish the story (he is so close to the end he can feel it in the fingers of his hands and in his heart). The catch in his voice. It is so close. And the time is short now.

"'The edge of evening . . . the long curve of people all wishing on the first star. . . . Always remember those men and women along the thousands of miles of land and sea. The true moment of shadow is the moment in which you see the point of light in the sky. The single point, and the Shadow that has just gathered you in its sweep . . .'" (24)

The days are bright outside the window, and the sun stays long, as it always does in the summer. The season is late now, or so it seems to him, and the skies haven't brought rain for weeks or for months. He tries not to look outside the window because there usually isn't all that much to see. Mainly, though, he just knows he shouldn't. And so he doesn't. He just sits most of the time, either on his chair or on the floor, and sometimes he'll lay down on the floor, too, without a pillow under his arm or his head, and he'll read aloud the story from the book. He speaks into the vent, though he doesn't think anyone is there to hear him anymore these days. Not the way there used to be, anyway. This is not the house where he used to live, after all. Or if it is, things have moved on; things have changed. There's no one now to hear him. No one on the other end. No audience to hear the story that he has read for so long, one word at a time, one sentence at a time, down into the vent, down into the ringing metal of the tunnel that wraps around him and rings his voice back to him, at times. Alone.

"And it is just here, just at this dark and silent frame, that the pointed tip of the Rocket, falling nearly a mile per second, absolutely and forever without sound, reaches its last unmeasurable gap above the roof of the old theatre, the last delta-t." (25)

It's like saying Goodbye to an old friend, he thinks to himself. Almost it is. The words coming fast now, the pages thin and gone beneath his fingers. There is nothing to hold on to now. There is nowhere to go, his eyes drawing ever downward on the page, toward the end, the beginning of the white space closing in on the last of the printed type. He savors the moment, draws it out, tasting it like a candy he remembers from when he was a boy, holding on to that flavor for as long as he can.
But it's over now. At long last he can see the end. He can see the way it's over. And it's really not as bad as he once thought it would be. It's really not as sad as he once feared, either. The book is over. He has read it all, aloud, to no one but himself. His final recitation of only two words--the book's closing thought. How it begins with a missile's scream, he laughs, and ends with a song. A dance--a bit of old vaudeville. A chorus of disparate voices (ranging 400 or more). And a quiet, whispered invitation, a beckoning toward erasure. And then it's over.
And the rest, when it comes, he knows, is silence.

"Now everybody----" (26)

____________________

NOTES

(1): Waters, Roger. "Brain Damage." The Dark Side of the Moon. Harvest/EMI. Prod. Alan Parsons. 1973. Music.

(2): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_in_the_United_States#:. Web.

(3): Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 756). Print.

(4):  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nishinoshima_(Ogasawara). Web.

(5): ibid

(6): Knives Out. Dir. Rian Johnson. Lionsgate, 2019. Film.

(7):  Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 275). Print.

(8): Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 3). Print.

(9):  https://lithub.com/the-50-best-one-star-amazon-reviews-of-thomas-pynchons-gravitys-rainbow/. Web.

(10.): ibid

(11): The Exorcist. Dir. William Friedkin. Warner Brothers. 1973. Film.

(12): Caesar, Ed. "Don DeLillo: A Writer Like No Other," The Sunday Times (London), Feb. 21, 2010. Print.

(13): Lewis, C.S. "Learning in War-Time." The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. The MacMillan Company. 1949. Print.

(14): Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 644-5). Print.

(15): Alighieri, Dante. Divine Comedy: The Inferno. Trans. Robert Pinskey. The Noonday Press: New York City. 1994. Canto I, lines 1-2 (pg. 3). Print.

(16): Salm, Arthur. "A Screaming Comes Across the Sky (but Not a Photo)," San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 8 2004. Print.

(17): Locke, Richard. "One of the Longest, Most Difficult, Most Ambitious Novels in Years," The New York Times Book Review, March 11, 1973. Print.

(18): Young Frankenstein. Dir. Mel Brooks. 20th Century Fox. 1974. Film.

(19): Sheppard, R.Z. "V. Squared," Time Magazine, March 15, 1973. Print.

(20): Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925). Scribner Paperback Edition. Scribner: New York City. 2003. (pg. 189). Print.

(21): Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 440). Print.

(22): Dickinson, Emily. "Much Madness is divinest Sense - " (#435). The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Little, Brown and Company: Boston. 1960. (pg. 209). Print.

(23): Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics Edition. Penguin Books: New York City. 1995. (pg. 758). Print.

(24): ------ . (pg. 759-60).

(25): ------ . (pg. 760).

(26): ibid

APPENDIX A

(A Short Cross-Section, in No Certain Order,

of Some of the "Big," "Important," and/or "Difficult" Books

the Author Has Read...So Far)

Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy: Volume One), Cormac McCarthy
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Odyssey, Homer
The Iliad, Homer
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
Nemesis, Philip Roth
Beowulf, (Anonymous)
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
All the President's Men, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O'Brien
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Something Happened, Joseph Heller
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
The Poems of Robert Frost, Robert Frost
My Antonia, Willa Cather
Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian
Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
Dubliners, James Joyce
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
Native Son, Richard Wright
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories, Raymond Carver
All of Us: The Collected Poems, Raymond Carver
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Plague Dogs, Richard Adams
White Noise, Don DeLillo
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace
Infiinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Ariel, Sylvia Plath
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
Purity, Jonathan Franzen
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
1984, George Orwell
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
The Shining, Stephen King
The Stand, Stephen King
It, Stephen King
The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Dune, Frank Herbert
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
The World According to Garp, John Irving
The Cider House Rules, John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
The Nix, Nathan Hill
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Mosquito Coast, Paul Theroux
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius, Dave Eggers
Zeitoun, Dave Eggers
Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
1Q84, Haruki Murakami
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon *
etc.

* (Finished: 7/21/20)

APPENDIX B

(A Short Cross-Section, in No Certain Order,

of Some of the "Big," "Important," and/or "Difficult" Books

the Author Has Not Read...So Far)

Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce *
Roots, Alex Haley
Shogun, James Clavell
The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Sabbath's Theater, Philip Roth
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy: Volume Three), Cormac McCarthy
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Crime and Punishment, Fydor Dostoevsky
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
The Recognitions, William Gaddis
J R, William Gaddis
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Kafka on the Shore, Huruki Murakami
The Epic of Gilgamesh, (Anonymous)
The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Vladimir Nabakov
Hangsaman, Shirley Jackson
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
2666, Roberto Bolano
The Sagas of Icelanders, (Anonymous)
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski **
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick
The Magus, John Fowles
The Collector, John Fowles
The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
4 3 2 1, Paul Auster
V., Thomas Pynchon
Slow Learner: Early Stories, Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon
Libra, Don DeLillo
Mao II, Don DeLillo
The Aeneid, Virgil
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Pale King, David Foster Wallace
The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann ***
Antkind, Charlie Kaufman ****
etc.

* (I just don't know about this one. I'm bold and daring, but... Again, I know my limitations.)

** (I don't know about this one, either...)

*** (1,000 + pages, told in a--basically--single sentence stream-of-consciousness burst, from the central consciousness of an Ohio woman/mother/housewife. The sound of it almost reminds me, somewhat, of Chantal Akerman's 1975 film masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I honestly can't wait to tackle this book. What the fuck is wrong with me? Have I learned nothing?) https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-one-sentence-capture-all-of-life

**** (A nearly 800-page postmodern experiment--another one--in which the protagonist, a film critic in existential crisis mode, has viewed a stop-motion film that takes 3 months to watch, and then the film is destroyed, and then he must recreate it from memory, frame-by-frame. No, I'm serious.... Call me crazy, but--like above--I can't wait to read this. Again, what the fuck is wrong with me? Have I learned nothing?) https://slate.com/culture/2020/07/charlie-kaufman-novel-antkind-book-review.html

APPENDIX C

(A Short Cross-Section, in No Certain Order,

of Some of the "Big," "Important," and/or "Difficult" Books

the Author Has Started--With the Best of Intentions--but Left Unfinished...So Far)

Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time: Volume One), Marcel Proust
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt *
Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare
L'Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, Amy Hempel
Paradise Lost, John Milton
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dark Tower (Series), Stephen King
The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson
The Crossing (The Border Trilogy: Volume Two), Cormac McCarthy
Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel, Susanna Clarke
A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
The Golden Bowl, Henry James
Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
Forty Stories, Donald Barthelme
The Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor, Flannery O'Connor
etc.

* (I've tried twice. I honestly can't do it--and what's more important, maybe, I don't seem to want to do it. I think I'm alone on this one, though, so someone please tell me what I'm missing here with Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.)

____________________

The Sounding

Monday, July 13, 2020

The People We Stumble Upon in This Portable Magic: Reading in 2023

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