Like almost all King's lucky, cute prose, it can seem effortless! The less effort it seems like it would have taken, though = the more it actually tooLike almost all King's lucky, cute prose, it can seem effortless! The less effort it seems like it would have taken, though = the more it actually took. I know. Marvelously tidy too, seeming sort of like Harlan Ellison or Kurt Vonnegut in a little sense. We're deeper into bright pluckiness of Ross's film Pleasantville at first than dark history of Dick's book Man in the High Castle. But certainly one-to-the-next crinkling, maturing. Certainly past the 2014 short film I'm You, Dickhead鈥 as amusing as that can be about time travel paradoxes that eventually stack up.
King's book is more toward out-there nice philosophy of Ramis's film Groundhog Day or a zillion other scrappy stories. Jake Epping, our hero, wearily says something's "dangerous as any other" (65); or, after a little joke (because in the rules of this particular time-travel scheme, when he went back it could all be erased, redone), "He'd never remember (75); we realize after all this, though, that time is "uniquely malleable" (112).
Today's pervasive, generalized mood of tasteless, hacky crap runs counter, then, to brighter nostalgia of '50s sweetness; but of course that'll end up untrue, by gum. Starry nostalgia, etc. "If I ever gave you the idea that 1958鈥檚 all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream", recalling an icky segregated bathroom (346). Later, he starts a statement "If you鈥檝e ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you" (446) -- lucky for him, I can relate to that! But relating (as petty as a sentiment like that can seem) is fortunately rare in the whole book.
Baby Hitler, though: would you kill him? Haha. Screechingly, whoopingly louder, earlier than King's 11/22/63 premise, but worth considering anyway. Personally, I'm way too feeble to kill anybody, even a baby; so I'm instantly off the hook, so to speak. But if I could? Probably, yes. I'd have more qualms than Epping, I reckon (little of the book's actually his feelings about homicide! A lot of the book that direction would for sure be a drag, but as it is I think we're off balance): I'd have to deliberate on many Holocaust torture/murder victims and his state's whole sponsorship, impunity, ugliness, yada yada. Boring!
Plus, would the baby for sure become the identical adult? Would stopping Hitler prevent the rise of the Third Reich (weren't other Teutonic obsessives, and maybe other failed painters, on track for hating Jews, building fascist empires?), the Holocaust (systematic persecution could be Japanese on Chinese?), or WWII (Mussolini might have ramped up Italian military, no?). Who knows? Well, historians have their educated guesses, but when all's said and done no one can know for sure. Until someone can (except in fiction, and for an event that'd be American in the early '60s): so here we are. Again.
Underneath all the time travel weirdness lies a regular mystery plot, with regular romance and events. King probably intended that mystery, a mystery of love, of romance, to be the core of his whole thing, and JFK time travel to be its dressing. But oh well! Epping, introduced to the phenomenon by Al Templeton, goes back as "George Amberson" to stop some killings (first civilians and then the 35th President himself!) but while there falls in love, lives life, the inevitable.
All with mostly peppy but sometimes grumbly, sometimes adorably rough asides, like "But blocked? Unable to feel my feelings? No, I have never been those things" (21) or when he uses "I'm flagellating myself" as an expression and somebody else takes it teasingly/flirtatiously as a sarcastic joke (32). Eventually, the average miracle (like Hallorann?) says weird stuff like "bastard-ball" (142) and "suck job" (143). Elsewhere, we find "a fug" (202). Frankly, I don't know these things. But it's all good: I'm satisfied. Enough. Again.
We know the alcohol angst, though, as a King trademark: "many already leaving Sobriety City on the Alcohol Express" (419) and "a hollow-eyed intensity that suggested hangover" (470). Better is the little joke about Lee Harvey Oswald having houseplants -- which Jake uses as an excuse for skulking about his place, but is repeatedly disbelieved, 脿 la an incredulous "He had plants?" exclamation -- for making readers chuckle.
Curt plot hints roll along, in a long way but certainly a quick way鈥 "it would have been simple" to look up a name before I went back (168). "Richie and Bev had been the right ones" to dance with (193). After all, "It didn't seem likely" (274). To a religious disbeliever, "If God had wanted you to know that part, He would have told you" (344).
There are good expressions like "Life turns on a dime. Sometimes toward us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes" (485). But also some cringey expressions like "And the crowd, as they say, goes wild" (513). But, shrug, what do we do?
In darker wrinkles is some ghastly misogyny and nihilism: "bring children into this filthy world? It's all going to blow up anyway, anyone who reads the paper can see that coming" (528). Except it didn't: duh! Earlier, of course, we'd heard "Life is too sweet to give up without a fight, don鈥檛 you think?" (409). Anti-life and pro-life yowls like those are few but pressing.
But in opposition, we find some simple teacher-happy stuff? Jake's an English teacher both in regular present life and artificial past life. "We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it鈥檚 too late. 'I don鈥檛 remember,' I said" (552). And simple political hops? "But did not Shakespeare say a man can smile, and smile, and be a villain? Do you know that Kennedy has okayed a CIA plan to assassinate Castro? Yes! They鈥檝e already tried鈥攁nd failed, thank God" (604).
In general of course, the squeaky-clean, King-managed trope of time travel is handled in an intricate but soft way all the time here. Shallow sometimes (whoa, 1958, nice), deep sometimes (what should each person do, when, why, a zillion times exponentially more complex), which can prompt a whole lot of ethical pondering somewhere else, in the reader, I guess. The book wisely sidesteps most of that on its surface text. Only in subtext does it really deal with it.
Peripheral to the twin pillars of 'Jake preventing JFK assassination' and 'Jake falling in love with Sadie, a girl of a whole different time and her own sordid dramas' is a smaller plot: going into the past just to win some bets, even if you're careful with them, can lead to some Mob nastiness. Tiny motifs (dance), tiny pop culture hints (music, TV) pervade the margins too. In I guess an overlong text where King builds somewhat a non-King plot, there's a lot of charm anyway, some excitement, even a little inspiration. The length doesn't hurt....more
Laila Lalami's Moor's Account is a little like Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which I also quite enjoyed. Not just for the simple reason both theirLaila Lalami's Moor's Account is a little like Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which I also quite enjoyed. Not just for the simple reason both their authors are African women, though that doesn't hurt in neatly tying them together for me; but I think more because of the surprisingly rich masculine voices at their cores. Black Mamba Boy was set decades back, about a boy, while Moor's Account is set centuries back, about a man.
Both historical Africans, though. Both written by women. I'm a white guy reading them. But I think I can relate: "What each of us wants, in the end, whether he is black or white, master or slave, rich or poor, man or woman, is to be remembered after his death" (11). Twee, perfect line to quote there then? Maybe.
In the year [but you won't know the number anyway, since it's an Islamic count our hero uses here, by Hegira; but I guess from 622?]鈥 Never mind, though. 1527 Narv谩ez expedition. Only four of the original party -- 脕lvar N煤帽ez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andr茅s Dorantes de Carranza, and Dorantes' enslaved Moor Estevanico -- survived the full thing. Explore Florida and the Gulf Coast, control it, colonize it, establish garrisons. Continually flashing back and forward, Moor's Account charts about a decade of momentous history.
Only a single line from Cabezo de Vaca's real report -- "el cuarto se llama Estevanico, es negro al谩rabe, natural de Azamor" ("The fourth is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor") -- attests fully to the historical truth. So this novel, though it's a novel, has some huge historical shoes to fill.
All along, the colonizers' arrogance, bluster, self-righteousness is naturally quite wrong and evil, but this African guy Estevanico (in their ranks but a slave) feels similar things as Indians I'm guessing: like them (colonizers) but like the Indians too (sensitive, the exploited, the downtrodden). More Ridley Scott's film 1492 than Malick's New World I suppose, but still intriguing. America, y'know! Jesus. We have to illegitimately 'discover' before we can illegitimately 'govern', right?
The hero's life, from angsty success in his own country toward becoming a slave (surprisingly and sadly enough, sort of by 'choice') to colonizers in the New World, is very nicely charted in Lalami's whole book. The devilments of both deep, deep history and deep, deep situation reversal (race, language, time) go hand in hand and make Moor's Account a must-read for this guy [here using thumbs to indicate self]. Realizing "his only means of salvation was to create a fiction" (521)? Hm.
The historical juice is for the most part stirred into the whole story quite wisely. Like McQueen's film 12 Years a Slave at times but also Peter Hunt's 1776. I like Lalami's prose a lot, either minor metaphor (so eager that he appeared to be "posing for an unseen sculptor" (14)) or major theme (I "felt ashamed, because I had been made a witness to these acts of theft and, unable to stop them, an accomplice to them as well" (15)).
Status quo awfulness, enslaving Africans and/or conquering New World natives, is usually shrugged off by some in the book quite heavily: either [so strange these Castilians were that] "just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was" (21). Or, later on, a friar's excuses for "an ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances" (124).
Sometimes, I guess, especially when we're dealing in minutiae, it can seem a little simple, everything served up in pat fashion. Curious relic! We condescend to it all, watch them fuss with olden things. Maybe in earlier drafts it was even higher drama, more arch, fussier -- I don't really know, I'm not the writer or a writer -- but there's still a small, marginal feeling of 'Oh boy, another foreign word, patly present this please'.
Kind of like a recent film to me: Twomey's Breadwinner, much different setting but similar historical preciousness, obviousness, tone I find a bit wrong. I'm not quite sure the particular vagaries of historical fiction there (I kind of grasp cinema's but haven't read deeply enough to know literature's), but it feels a little stereotypically low sometimes. Not sticking out exactly but not quite blended in enough.
However, "The women had made witnesses of us, even those of us who had chosen to close our eyes" (155).
Flashbacks to Azemmur in Morocco, where Estevanico came from, have more Arabic to them, while present happenings have more Spanish. There's an imbalance, though, in translating or explaining. I seem to have my hand held more in Morocco than in Florida, things pointed out, defined. All the hand-holding: it annoys me! I often need my hand held, that's not untrue, but it shouldn't be in so obvious a way. I think.
Maybe because Spanish is more a white Westerner's tongue than Arabic, though I personally don't speak either, I'm apter to forgive one than the other oddness in translation or non-translation, explanation or non-explanation, fit or unbelonging. Language I might see in a way that's a little racist, a little chauvinist, sorry. I do not fully grasp everything I do.
The syntax of the main text is pretty nice all things considered, though. Description nicely interwoven with feeling, time swaying present to past. And in smaller terms of dialogue, we feel what we don't feel: "Have you" instead of 'Do you have', no contractions, older and formal, the mood of Quixote often enough in stiff old Spanish or whatnot. By him as an African as well as by his Castilian fellow explorers. Lalami's whole text is like a grown-up and much better My Brother Sam Is Dead for hard historical fiction?
Some expressions repeat -- 'arquebus' a Spanish or Portuguese colonist's weapon; 'Land of the Indians' obvious but 'Land of Corn' a little less so; 'cacique' for Indian chief, pre-Columbian Spanish bleeding into that time decades ahead; 'this servant of God' like the deferential Muslim yours truly -- as obscure or typical little motifs variously enough. I like how little things like this bend time still further, in a woozy and psychedelic way, Africa-Europe-America, all together now; timeline, ethics, feeling.
Estevanico, born Mustafa ibn Muhammad, surrenders himself to survive/escape a drought while trying to support his family. He never sees them again. Slowly/sadly, he meets and befriends fellow slave Ramatullai, only to be yanked away again. Transatlantic then, surviving better than many of the better-fed, better-provisioned Europeans, he encounters hardship after hardship in a new America.
Slavery as an evil/dehumanizing institution, crazily awful to say the least, is seen not just in monochromatic villainy but in more interesting ways. Poverty, unpreparedness to defend against exploitation/colonization, easiest way to surrender against huge shame, etc. There's lots of discussion all the time, in Africa or in America or in some sad mix. I don't know. I'm no historian, and all we have here really is one individual's experience, but I think it proves pretty remarkable.
All the same, he persists sometimes in slavery acceptance, even when he's a slave himself: "I remembered all the times I had seen slaves in the marketplace of my hometown. I had never thought about these men and women, had never wondered how they had ended up in chains, had never worried about who they had left at home and who would miss them and pray for their return. I had passed them and gone about my business, delivering wax to a merchant or buying flour for the evening meal, without dwelling on the sight" (181). And after seeing a fellow slave, a girl, annoyed physically, he "gave many thanks to God that I was not born a woman and did not have to suffer her humiliation" (182).
Surviving? but in an easy, 100% good way or as a 'long-hauler' like today's Covid patients? (Too soon or too long/offensive of a connection to make?) A difficult mix. It depends. Along the way, our hero takes up some medicine (脿 la Gordon's Physician) and, always, storytelling. (To me, more Levin's Instructions than McGraw's Golden Goblet, though? aside from the obvious difference in quality/aim) "I was alive. The warmth of the sun was on my face and hands" (315) and "The world was not what I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive" (347).
Then, Capoque a tribe they're with temporarily; then, Carancahua, a rougher tribe; then, Yguace simplistically better (Chaubekwan a two-spirit, gender-fluid acquaintance of theirs, like a proud second line dancer from New Orleans or something). It's always interesting too to see where religion, whether Muslim or Christian, is in a historical context like this: absent until it's convenient; then, very present. Ha. It's fun to see Jesus just as any old prophet, how a Muslim might, than as the Son of God.
Very appropriate anyway for any holy conquest! They "drifted from the matter of wealth to the matter of God -- few minds can entertain both subjects at once" (511).
Our hero still trusts whites sometimes, too often: "that had been our agreement: we would share all of our earnings" (389) or how some might pretend to be working "to establish imperial settlements through peaceful means" (435) or, even, sadly, realizing some whites could "never be moved by the power of words" (437), so what's he to do anyway? Try a fiction?
He "thought of the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, of all those who had built empires and left behind an imposing trace of their passage in the world. To be present in a place where one empire was ending and another was rising made of me a privileged witness. Yet I did not try to keep a record of the moment. All I wanted was to return to the city I called home" (450).
Sad a little, too, how they seem to have made some Indians "Amigos", Kapo-like betrayers of their own people, after little perks; and what a name they have in general: Amigos. Friends. [Insidious?] And in particular they're renamed too, but not with actual names, just innocuous Spanish nouns. That's one of the ways they work (fascists): conscripting a certain slice of their enemy to exclude themselves and work with them, to divide and conquer, to get the other side to willingly lower themselves and surrender something. Like a name. How does it work honestly, Estevanico fka Mustafa? I'm not blaming. Just curious.
In a petty way, Moor's Account might just leave the reader in shame and disappointment (what have we done? [enslaved, colonized, exploited] and what are we doing [well, New Zealand's celebrating Waitangi Day on Feb 6 still for one thing]), but I bet in a more mature way you could get a lot different out of it. Not really What have _I_ done? or What am _I_ doing now? [not much personally, I swear! Haha] but more What will we do now? Maybe we can foster the Green New Deal or Thrive Agenda and begin to roll back some damage to Indigenous communities.
I guess we're going through good fiction back into history, and we have the opportunity now, as always, to turn historical past to present/future and fiction to actuality....more
I'm afraid it was a little disappointing. Just a limp Art of War thing. I thought we could be funnier, more comical, lighter. C'mon.I'm afraid it was a little disappointing. Just a limp Art of War thing. I thought we could be funnier, more comical, lighter. C'mon....more
Curious enough that he's supposed "eccentric" or "insane" -- and indeed Braun's YA mini-bio belabors these a bit. But he seems to me neither of those Curious enough that he's supposed "eccentric" or "insane" -- and indeed Braun's YA mini-bio belabors these a bit. But he seems to me neither of those but instead clearly just a tragic case of failed expectations. "If I were a poet," the King wrote in 1886, oddly self-aware all at once, "I might be able to reap praise by putting these things to verse. But the talent of expression was not given to me, and so I must bear being laughed at, scorned and slandered." Relatable to some quirky indie millennials, but zoomingly how else? A few missed opportunities (like, the coup attempt right before a mysterious and Anastasia-like death? Thicken and weird-up and lengthen that shit, c'mon) but overall a solid little jaunt....more
You know this is the perfect utopia, the perfect riches to rags, wise snapshot of 2013-era Facebook, Google, Apple tech boom. We're gonna show a 21st-You know this is the perfect utopia, the perfect riches to rags, wise snapshot of 2013-era Facebook, Google, Apple tech boom. We're gonna show a 21st-century millennial environment, deep in the lucky day after day, darkening pleasantries of cult. At first the la-la waltz, crash into paranoia and gossip, all the way into how everything's a torturous jungle of empty back-biting, miscommunication, impure bullshit. The cult steps -- more and more 'Participation, participation, participation', emptier and more sickening all the time (the way you feel, stomach drop, the way you'll feel) -- are sometimes annoyingly neat and paper-thin, but it's decent.
Handmaid's Tale dystopia, back and forth with regular old trend-piece-hopping twentysomething angst, complete with wise-yet-smartaleck buddy who's into it more as well as usual romance. I can see an irritating groan (used this already, in d茅but Heartbreaking Work, sophomore You Shall Know, and echoes in arguably everything else) after that old trope of parent being ill, stranding a young adult setting out by themselves; but I like in The Circle the solidity of insurance paperwork being the most profound pain of it, lending us some weird/new foothold. Leading us briskly through a deep drama of several hundred pages is never the easiest. And, I mean, as long as California's what you know, then I suppose a lot should be set there.
However (and this is when I, a denizen of these important internets, say 'However' as the first word of a new paragraph, and markedly adjust the argument advanced so far (You can wait till later to give this a 'smile' or 'frown'; just be honest! But no seriously, give me a smile, give me a smile or I'll reach through this screen and gouge out your eyes), the whole work can strike one as just dashed-off, to catch the zeitgeist and ride it wherever. I'm just gonna be brutally honest, as I know Mr. Eggers hangs on every word posted about his books to goodreads-dot-com, and just declare straight up that I have a lot of reservations about The Circle. Sorry. It's very easy, kind of too flat, kind of too long. Good premise but not great substance! He should try again and ask me if I'll make my review sunnier, warmer.
Boy am I glad, however, that there is an Incognito option in many internets browsers. That way, I can freely and without embarrassment investigate child porn, trafficking in meth, the best and hugest assassination strategies for reprehensible political candidates, how to buy blackmail plane tickets to Aruba, etc. Until hackers get the gall/wherewithal to hack the unhackable, I will be totally fine. Pretend that there is a cult, see? and it surveils everything, tracks everything, infinite memory, sees all, horrifying. But is there a key? Maybe there is a key! Take that key and hold it up high (although I hope to God no raptor birds swoop down with a caw and steal it) because that's all you need.
I like all the challenges of making the content, though. I mean, a reader is supposed to eternally sympathize with such an awkward thing, blinkered and soliloquizing antiheroine swallowed by delusion. And then symbols emerge -- some very, very flat and obvious but some less so -- playing tenderly with creativity. So selfish ultimately, no? and in many ways self-defeating, a behind-the-times, anti-tech, closed-minded philosophy in general. Plus, a precursor to all the transcendently political corporate/environmental, Snowden/WikiLeaks, Black Lives Matter, Trump razzmatazz, right? I know you have strong views.
Furthermore, I'd be tempted to just slather a story like this in trendy acronyms or snide in-jokes, but not much like that happens. It's dialed back, just waiting. I don't know, self-righteousness or anonymous pain, it's hard to touch.
When I reviewed Bigelow's film K-19 () (what?? You didn't see that or aren't following my film reviews? Well, wow, why?? I'm a little hurt), I found a pretty interesting connection between it and McTiernan's Hunt for Red October. You ready for this? Basically, in comparing two very similar films about Soviet subs, Bigelow's an '00s one about '60s events and McTiernan's a '90s one about '80s events, the gap between subject and release could connect directly to the overall quality. Something similar could be said for books, Eggers' a 2013 one about up-to-the-second events in comparison to Pynchon's 2013 about events of a dozen years prior; and a TV series also about computer tech, AMC's Halt and Catch Fire, a 2013 one about events of about 25 years prior. I'm seeing quality expanding with time gaps when it comes to this very subject. Curious, no?
Or Badham's 1983 film about a precocious hacker, WarGames, or Robinson's 1992 Sneakers. Both written by the same team, examining similar quirky early PC culture. You see? You don't see? Like, computers are weird, so when you 'plug' fiction into it the fiction also becomes weird. Or something.
But soon we'll sweep it all away suddenly, with Ex Machina blood or something? Yes? To soothe (and, in so doing, solve!) each and every problem encountered thus far. I still can't believe, though, how you're zinging me about my use of the word "cult" and almost nobody sent me smiles for my K-19 review. Are these just meaningless tools to distract me, just pollution, or what? That makes pretty much no sense. "obfuscate," "Suffering is only suffering if it's done in silence," etc., etc....more
Not just a regular historical novel. Rough detective story crossed with deeply smooth art critique, between Ottoman and Venetian techniques, the custoNot just a regular historical novel. Rough detective story crossed with deeply smooth art critique, between Ottoman and Venetian techniques, the customs of old Muslims or new infidels. There's a time for "shit" or "fucking" to pop out in sudden, funny way in ancient, classically-tinged dryness. Maybe that's part of it? Or Turkey as a whole -- already pinned between Europe and the Middle East or between antiquity or modernity in whatever way is best for fresh trumpeting of globe understanding! -- can be put into a certain queer time back then? Enlightenment dawning; New World populating and strengthening; the Earth managing to finally be completely known!
What in the who still unknown, pines for marriage to whom, decides to visit elsewhere, comes across a new fact, etc. Eh. I do not understand and cannot recount or condense! But quite hypnotic and good and heart-clenching even so, all the prose really working in the best way. So different it feels than other attempts might. Singular! O! Not exactly like a soap opera but a plot that's complicated and involving like that. Sentimental but clever. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, yes, but when the most human and impressive material is within the last 50 or so you just have to buckle in. Very sad and then kind of happy and then woozily pretty sad: oops, might have sort of spoiled maybe, sorry....more
A fluid hybrid of political and personal, drawing out the momentous and enthralling life story of Yurii Andreevich Zhivago, a doctor in revolutionary A fluid hybrid of political and personal, drawing out the momentous and enthralling life story of Yurii Andreevich Zhivago, a doctor in revolutionary Russia torn between romances (Tonya or Larissa), occupations (doctor or writer), and ideas about the future of his country (go ahead with virulent Soviet politics, or turn back to moderation). He's also hapless but loyal, conflicted but unfailing, and one of the most captivating characters I've ever read in fiction.
Doctor Zhivago is a bleak but very rewarding piece of art. Each chapter in the novel seems to end just like the final shot of an episode of The Wire or Mad Men: an ambiguous but enthralling slice of reality-as-art or art-as-reality, a beautiful moment of incisive sociology and tender poetry. Each scene unravels a new wrinkle in Zhivago's life, how he bounces from one Russian city to the next, how he bumps his way among a cast of characters and always attempts to recover himself.
And, whoa, what a cast it is: Nikolai (Yurii's uncle and benefactor), Misha (a childhood friend), Gromeko (Tonya's wealthy family), Guishar (Lara's family), Komarovsky (a rival warrior), Antipov (Lara's cuckolded husband), etc., etc. Anywhere from indispensable to merely peripheral, all are necessary to elaborate different angles of Yurii's life.
Still, I never felt I needed to be fully familiar with each and every character (God help you if you read a Russian novel otherwise), so any confusion was pretty superficial. I just relaxed, went with the flow, and the remainder was still a fresh and ever-sharpening image of Yurii Zhivago himself.
I did have some nits to pick with the editing of the whole of it, especially the extensive dialogue. Whole conversations can be entirely quotes, with few if any tags to remind me who's speaking. Some of these entries are multi-paragraph (Beginning quote, no end quote鈥 until a future paragraph, maybe three or four later, where the end quote finally returns to close it off), which only further sows confusion.
And often, a scene break occurs with the same characters in the same place, only a moment or two jumped ahead, when the topic of their conversation shifts in a particular way at a particular time, enough to justify drawing the curtain closed and open again.
But there's an undeniable beauty to the prose, however imperfect the translation can sometimes be. Pasternak is as talented zooming in on quiet, subdued moments as he is opening up huge, sweeping, picturesque views of war, politics, philosophy, religion, etc. The novel is even capped by a selection of poems, thanks to Yurii's occasional forays into verse. It's an ultimate, pitch-perfect snapshot of a complex thinker....more
Vineland is a 1990 novel by postmodern maestro Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, etc.). Like those other books, it revels in weVineland is a 1990 novel by postmodern maestro Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, etc.). Like those other books, it revels in weirdness, the fringe, drugs and networks and culture. In 1984 California, in a rough town called Vineland, Zoyd and his 14-year-old daughter Prairie dodge the war on drugs, governmental/corporate incompetence, and the enduring clutter of '60s-era hippies and '80s-era Reaganites.
After an absurd opening -- Zoyd has to jump through a glass window, in an annual (obligatory) look-at-me-I'm-still-crazy stunt, to ensure government benefits, with tacit approval by almost everyone -- a conspiracy rolls out against him and Prairie. Hector Zu帽iga (a drug-enforcement federale from Zoyd's left-cruising past) and Brock Vond (a DEA agent from a profounder and heartfuller past) start chasing. What they want hinges on Frenesi Gates, an old girlfriend of Zoyd whose business crossed 24fps (a fascist-fighting militant film collective) and the People's Republic of Rock and Roll, or PR鲁 (a secessionist dope-smoking group).
A flashback to Frenesi's mom Sasha, a leftist and jazz singer before and during WWII ("Uniforms all over the place. Wild and rowdy like the Clark Gable movie. Bars that would stay open all day and night, trumpet and saxophone music blasting at you out of doorways..."), and Frenesi's present attempt to cash a check ("If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of human lives and deaths..."), are both impressive sections of text. The bigger story includes a group called the Thanatoids, karmic ghosts attached to something "like death but not," and the Kunoichi retreat, a group of ultra-powerful female ninjas.
Omniscient entertainment fixations include television (known ubiquitously as The Tube and as a notorious Thanatoid reward), Star Trek, lounge music, and, in one blinking guy-next-to-me-on-the-plane vignette, a handheld game called "Nukey": a pathetic cross between orgasms and explosions.
Like all Pynchon, Vineland is something of a mish-mash. A colossal whizzing mish-mash of confusion and inscrutability, with the usual suspects (pop culture, rural personalities, loyalties and intrigue, esoterica, etc.) on full display.
But I'm afraid he clumsily elevates one particular slice of life -- the government slice, the kind on bank records and official forms -- not at the expense of looking at other slices, or chaotically/thrillingly shuffling them all around, but just as kind of a get-rich-quick "We've had some wild times, but I think you know where the 'real' stuff really is..." way to end a story. Disappointing really. Lot 49 buried that easy answer in a labyrinthine freakout and a sinister cliffhanger; Gravity's Rainbow buried it in ineluctable rotten history; but Vineland just doesn't know what to do with it, and that's a shame....more
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