I finally got my head back into the book and read 50 pages today, which means I’m only — yikes! — 100 pages behind. I did dig the hottentot attempt (remember that?). And you guys are all inspiring me with tales of great things coming down the path.
My new plan is to read an hour a day. What’s an hour a day? Nothing, right? I spend 45 minutes a day working on my Mandy Patinkin imitation, so if I just put that on hold for a week or two, I’m 45/60ths of the way there.
Tuesday 5/29 Dang if I’m not gonna aim to meet you at or near the bottom of page 907, where someone’s “Constantinople” inclined.
(which is to say…. please use this thread to comment on anything up to page 907. Aim to finish reading that part of the book and to comment on it here by end o’ day next Monday)
Pugnax!
-Cecil
Cecil, did you go and see “Air” just to have an “A” band to include? That’s cool!
Out of town next week and won’t be packing our favorite five pounds of joy, hence the freakishly early comment.
The Cyprian-Yashmeen-Reef ménage this section didn’t do much for me. They’ve never seemed real to me to begin with (can’t picture any one of them, just their hair & hats & clothes), so their quasi-mystical bonding, which recalls (doubles? bi-locates?) the Lake-Deuce-Sloat triangle, left me confused and cold. Sexual attraction in general sort of throws me in this book. It’s both deliberately generic (familiar fetish-type scenarios) and self-consciously symbolic, a dousing rod for other kinds of power relationships (who gets to abase whom) and ambient energies that, in this case, I can’t quite make out.
I still can’t help wishing Reef had stayed the Kieselguhr Kid, and have never understood what he’s up to rolling around Europe as a gentleman gambler. He seems “off the rails” to me in a way that maybe Pynchon’s saying we’re off the rails? All our capital comforts, but forgetting the oppressed? Because part of that “against the day” theme, taking things east, may be to show how trivial Europe’s become. Case in point: Dally’s nutty celebrity turn in London (899).
But then the story seems to be about going “off the rails:” losing the mission, dropping the revenge plans, sliding in & out of plot. Like redemption means you’re free of obligations, out of power’s control. Including the author’s Derrick Theign-like powers of pushing you seemingly wherever he wants you. And the writing keeps going, elegant, minutely observed, expertly dialogued: the novel cranking out its novelness with nowhere particularly urgent (like us? Europe? the day?) to go, except to its end.
Rodney — it’s true. (also: you have sharp eyes, my friend.)
It was So-Called-Bill’s idea, and while we both like Air, the missing A was definitely a factor. Now I need to go see King Crimson and Queen (with Paul Rodgers).
-Cecil
Am I wrong to think of Cyprian’s “Very nice, very nice, very nice-in-deed” song (pp, 888-889, thank you very much) as a friendly nod to our man Vonnegut?
Also, seems like the Against the Day market is way down these days. I happened to notice that Amazon is now selling the hardback for a mere $10.50. Rather irksome, actually.
I hit this on p. 896
Ruperta tells us “You must never forgive me, Hunter. I can claim forgiveness from anyone. Somehow, I alone, for every single wrong act of in my life, must find the right one to balance it. I may not have that much time left.”
Reminded me of the general idea of balance that I had at the beginning of this book (and long ago lost track of). Like the bi-location and the Werfner/Renfrew split, TRP loves those binary oppositions. But the whole book (like most of his others) is a study in the problem of thinking there are two kinds of anything in the world.
Reminds me of Earl Hickey and his list.
this book is so random it’s pretty much a joke to try to make any sense of it. the sheer anarchy of it may even be its best joke. ordinarily i don’t mind passing my time in this way, but for some reason in here it’s an assault on the senses – at times. that complexity and esoterica (arguable adjectives, surely) – there’s got to be something in here – i can’t shake that – i was just born too early. anyway. ‘anal assault’ of men by women is clearly one of the big themes in this section. i can’t help but think now that there’s a strong correlation between these random sexual relationships and the general hysteria leading up to world war i and the search for shambhala, even if the flirtations and various sex scenes do seem generally (deceptively? see, i still want to give him credit) to add no more than a nice diversion – they usually come across (for me) stale, forced and often laughable (which could be the point if only i didn’t get the strong impression the author thinks they’re simply terrific). but. that scene with reef, yahsmeen, and cyprian, when yashmeen presumably got pregnant, was pretty hot. (sidenote: i wrote all of the above before reading the few comments already posted – but cool to see that rodney is articulating even better than i some of what i’m feeling – but i still have to admit to finding that cyprian-yahsmeen-reef scene alone more fascinating than the entire lake-deuce-sloat story, which i also enjoyed.)
For the first time I see the end of the book in sight, like Im just one long plane ride away from mugnificence.
Dr. V, I also paused in reading Pert’s comment on sins and good deeds needing to balance out.
And similarly, just a few pages before that, on the power of the doges, “… in which penance must be a necessary term. Unless one has performed in his life penance equal to what he has extracted from others, there is an imbalance in Nature.”
Im going from wondering what it all means, to wondering how it will end. And I am curious how big a role Vlado’s mysterious book will play in the last couple hundred pages.
about the yashmeen-reef-cyprian scenes–yes, better than the previous trysts, maybe because pynchon took his time (haha).
del’s observation about the confluence of pre-war hysteria and sex scenes plus some quotes from the last section (“history–Time’s pathology” [828] and “as if time were provided with sexual nerves” [839]) make me think about time, presented here, as an organism, a body run by passion and disease rather than intellect. we’d like to control time (mind over body). or failing that, maybe we’d be content to map where we’ve been (history), the better to pin all the patterns down on an analytical or mathematical or mystical framework. it’s that kind of knowledge that might support predictive powers (for winning at roulette and greater gambles). and we could then triumph, perhaps, over the great unruly time/body–yay! or we could just be f*cked (“in the realm of pain and destruction, what can polarity matter?” [903]).
or maybe there’s another path–to borrow from the GRDM on one of its happier days–perhaps we can opt out of all this duality and go on our way “just feeling natural.”
Still busy playing catch up — I’ve read about 75 pages in the last few days, but I’m still only at 778. The passage on page 777 about the war on shamanism had me thinking about John Edwards’ recent comments that “the war on shamanism is just a bumpersticker, not a strategy.” Pynchon, timely as ever.
-Cecil
Hi e.,
Re: Time as a body–Wow. Double wow.
Falling behind, irritated at the randomness, want this to come together somehow but losing hope (mostly). Trying to come to the state of “finding a perverse fascination in Patience, not so much as a virtue but more as a hobby requiring discipline, like chess or mountain-climbing.”
also playing catch-up. meow to pynchon.
Cyprian, returning bedraggled to Venice: “Some reap the whirlwind, he was left to gelan the undelineated fog – penance, he supposed, for never having learned to think analytically.”
Sublime.
I spent the holidays gulping down huge chunks of the book, and am at the point where Derrick’s about to get his from the Los Bros. Uskok. Still don’t know if it will happen or if it’s just another example of actions failing. All I could think about is that there ain’t a danged thing about doubling or refracting in a while. And if it weren’t for the CoC over Tunguska I’d’ve thought he forgot about the invaders. (Do check out the Butterfly shaped dead area that’s still there in Siberia. Go to Wikipedia>Tunguska Event & see the links to the satellite maps. Fascinating.)
Perhaps his problem is that there are so many plotlines that he should have made this two books. Dunno.
One thing to keep in mind when reading the sex scenes, is that TRP is 70 years old. Even if he’s been writing this book for 10 years, he’s not the young stallion he was in GR. I keep thinking about the later Hitchcock, where he could barely move the camera to watch a blonde get tortured.
High points last week: The Idiot song, (I want to set that to music) Kit doing SOMETHING, Vlado the impaler eating Yashmeen’s heart, Cyprian’s adventures with Danilo. Low point: trying to remember if some character was new or introduced earlier, (Don’t even remember which one.) Khautsch as the mysterious Colonel.
Final question–will Kit circumnavigate the world West to East and achieve his next state?
First week I’ve failed to read anything at all (I’m back around 830), but I’m checking in, a day early according to Cecil Standard Time.
In the category of “how does your book look,” I have new development. On the way to work this morning, my daughter’s cup of chocolate milk leaked and did some serious damage to the front pages of my ATD (as well as minor damge to a few CD jewel boxes – though the digipak for the newest Blonde Redhead CD may have suffered the most).
Fortunately, the chances of pages sticking together seems limited to the front end of the book, so it should not hinder reading, but I find the aesthetics rather disheartening.
I’ve visiting family in Maryland all week and well, we all had the stomach flu. so to avoid any further damage to my copy of ATD, I’m staying away from it this week. I really didn’t want to add insult to injury on the “How Does Your Book Look” string. (Why did no one complain about the state of Don Quixote?) I’m hoping to do a big catchup on the plane ride home.
Mate! I wish I’d known, I would have caught up! But I only started this week and aren’t very far in, I think Reef? Is working for Tesla? I haven’t read it in days.
I’m finding it’s the first Pynchon book I can both read and mostly enjoy (although nothing will top GR)…
This is my highlight so far:
“But if the Frontier was gone now, did that mean Lew was about to disconnected, too, from himself? sent off into exile, into some silence beyond silence as retribution for a remote and ancient vice always just about to be remembered, half stunned, in a half dream like a surgeon’s knot taken swiftly in the tissue of time and pulled snug, delivered into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well?”
What a sentence!
i’ve finally figured out why i’m so behind by about 100 pages. i think there is some computer glitch at cecilvortex that is preventing the tuesday morning updates to be posted. then by thursday i’ve forgotten i’m trudging through snow on a deathmarch when it’s actually a 90 degree day. where are my updates? we are being tested, the goverment has gotten to cecil.
The other dan is certainly correct that cecil’s updates don’t match my notions of a Tuesday. I suspect that cecil is using time as a scalar and if I had paid more attention in the quaternion section, I’d know when the updates are coming.
“Tuesday”? What is this “Tuesday” thing of which you speak? Also, other Dan, I think the reason you’re 100 pages behind is that I’m using my mind powers to keep you pretty much exactly in synch with me. Sorry about that.
Now…releasing you…from my…thrall.
Thursday DM post will be up later today. I’m pretty sure.
-Cecil
Can feel the mug slipping from my fingers, here at 4pm on a Thursday, week 17, not having a moment to devote to TP, beyond scribbling this….
Disappearing Steve
Now does everyone see why I didn’t post yet? I was waiting for Steve! Yes — that’s all it was! Just me being big-hearted!
Also, Steve, not to worry — you’re still in the running. Also, Sheldon, welcome!
-Cecil “post still to come” V.
did Pynchon, or TRP as you call him, originate “history–Time’s pathology,” p 828? I think whoever said time is a body is right, and I also think history is a viscous THING