Inherent Vice

One of the benefits of being a selective reader is that I like and often love almost every book I read. It pains me to say anything negative about any book, but I do want to talk about this one. Of the books I've over the last few months, I least enjoyed Inherent Vice. See, I can't even come out and say I didn't like it.

I should make a couple of points before I explain my problems with it.

Inherent Vice is the first Thomas Pynchon I've read. From the standpoint of accessibility, it was a great place to start. Based on my subsequent reading of Gravity's Rainbow and after talking to Pynchon fans, I'm certain this book is more straightforward than any of the others. And it's only fair to note that because the author's work has been so celebrated, my expectations were unusually high. And finally, Inherent Vice is a detective novel. Millions of people adore them, but they've just never been my thing.

Pynchon has a number of distinctive quirks. I've only read two of his books, but I'm betting these affectations are in all seven. His characters all have oddball names, he sprinkles fictional lyrics throughout the narratives and his sense of humor is kind of corny. Some readers adore this about his work. I find it a little goofy, bordering on irritating.

There are other qualities about his writing that I like a lot. His work is frequently described as encyclopedic. I was overwhelmed and amazed by the variety and sheer volume of cultural, scientific, mathematical, historical, cinematic, literary and religious references in Gravity's Rainbow. Although Inherent Vice is nowhere near as ambitious, it is full of cultural and political references that firmly place the story in 1970. In both works, the blend of both real and imagined musicians, actors, songs and other touchstones has the interesting side effect of almost, but never quite grounding you.

Because he's spinning so many plates, it's easy to overlook the fact that Pynchon is an exceptional prose writer. Unfortunately, there were far more examples of great writing in Gravity's Rainbow, but now and then, something in this book made me stop to read it again:

"He crept along till he finally found another car to settle in behind. After a while in his rearview mirror he saw somebody else fall in behind him. He was in a convoy of unknown size, each car keeping the one ahead in taillight range, like a caravan in a desert of perception, gathered awhile for safety in getting across a patch of blindness. It was one of the few things he'd ever seen anybody in this town, except hippies, do for free."

I won't take the time to run through the storyline. You can find many fine pieces from actual book reviewers to get the synopsis. For the most part, it follows the kind of arc you'd expect for a detective story, although it bogs down a bit in the middle. I confess that I spent a great deal of time losing focus, not really knowing what was going on or what the point of introducing yet more characters into the mix was, all the while feeling like I must have gotten high without knowing it. The main character's constant dope smoking is infectious. And unlike Gravity's Rainbow, the story does come to a resolution that's satisfying enough.

How do I feel about Pynchon? He's brilliant. This book was a miss for me, but I look forward to going back to the beginning and reading more of him.

Next up: Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Death in Venice

Thomas Mann published Death in Venice just prior to the start of World War I. At 73 pages, the novella doesn't waste a word. It's infused with signs and symbols rooted in Freudian psychology and Greek mythology.

This story is about the artist and art and the balance (or imbalance) between intellect and passion.

It begins:

"Gustave Aschenbach -- or von Aschenbach, as he had been known officially since his fiftieth birthday -- had set out alone from his house in Prince Regent Street, Munich, for an extended walk. It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19__, when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months."

Aschenbach is a widower and highly respected literary figure from a conservative Prussian family. He places great value on hard work and concentration and considers the defeat of passion necessary to the creation of art. He values dignity. While on his walk he has a strange encounter with a disturbing, red haired man and almost immediately decides he'd like to take a trip. He tells himself that a change would be good for his work.

In the first of several dream sequences that occur throughout the story, Aschenbach fantasizes about a tropical marshland, the decaying, primeval, steaming landscape clearly representing suppressed passion and desire. He wakes and reverts to his normal cautious, dignified restraint and takes two weeks to carefully plan his trip.

He leaves the cold, intellectual, restrained northern European environment and travels south to Venice where the climate fosters unrestrained passion and decadence.

Soon after he checks into his hotel on the beach, he sees a fourteen year old Polish boy who is vacationing with his sisters, mother and a governess. Aschenbach finds Tadzio beautiful. At first he believes (or wants to believe) that his attraction to Tadzio is purely aesthetic. He's on holiday to write and arranges to work on the beach where he's also able to watch Tadzio all day long.

A strange antiseptic smell begins to pervade the city. To avoid alarming the tourists, the Venetians are keeping the reason quiet and claim it's merely a precaution. The German language newspapers provide no clues as to what's happening. The tourists are warned to avoid shellfish and fresh fruits and vegetables and as the days pass, vacationers begin to leave and there are fewer people on the streets.

Aschenbach makes plans to move on, but when he finds that his baggage has been misdirected to the wrong city he's ecstatic at the thought that he'll have to stay while it's retrieved. This is his point of no return. Aschenbach's admiration for Tadzio evolves to undeniable desire and lust. Aschenbach can no longer concentrate to work and becomes obsessed with the boy, planning his days to follow Tadzio and watch him from a distance.

Soon the smell of death is everywhere and a local finally reveals there's a cholera outbreak. Aschenbach no longer cares about the death and disease in Venice and fantasizes that perhaps everyone will die and leave him to spend time alone with Tadzio. His dreams are now filled with unbridled lust.

Aschenbach physically deteriorates. The hotel is nearly empty and he discovers that the Polish family is departing. He goes to the beach to watch Tadzio for the last time. The blond, pale Tadzio is roughhousing with an older, dark haired boy and the larger boy humiliates Tadzio, leaving him with his face in the sand.

Aschenbach watches from a beach chair as Tadzio walks toward the water alone in his shame. The boy turns around and looks to Aschenbach who sees, or believes he sees the boy beckoning to him. Several minutes later, Aschenbach is discovered dead of cholera in his chair.

I read Gravity's Rainbow several months after reading this and there were elements that were similar. Both books represent the north as elite and cerebral and the south as base and carnal. Both books draw heavily on mythology and dreams. Death in Venice is actually a great primer on the modernist style and certainly a great example of exercising economy with words.

That Mann chose to center Aschenbach's obsessions around pedophilia and homoerotic elements leaves me with questions. Mann was married and had six children, but it's believed that he was a homosexual. There was also an actual Tadzio that Mann and his wife saw while on a seaside vacation, although the real Tadzio was only eleven at the time. Were these factors part of the story because Mann was illustrating Aschenbach's extreme reaction to complete suppression of his libidinous nature?

If you've read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Next up: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

One a Day

Something was changing for a long time. It took about a year to understand it, but now I do. People who've been coming here for a long time know that the original focus of this blog was on writing. For a long time I couldn't stop writing and I couldn't stop talking about it. I took classes and workshops and attended retreats and wrote the better part of two bad novels before I stopped to try to figure out what my problem was.

It became obvious over time, but what I found was the more I challenged myself with what I read, the more unhappy I became with what I was writing. A woman I met through blogging and emails came to Denver this summer and we finally met in person. She'd read the first hundred pages of my second attempt and what she told me came as a strange relief. She thought what I'd written was very good, but after getting to know me she had a hard time reconciling what I'd written with who I am. It didn't sound like me.

By that time, I'd stopped writing completely and I focused all my energy on reading. I'm glad I did. The truth is that I don't want to write something I wouldn't want to read and I'm not capable of writing that well. Maybe I never will be.

Over the past few months I've started writing again, but I'm not working on a novel. I have notebooks full of ideas and fragments and pages of gibberish that would make Gertrude Stein chuckle, but it's what I need to do now. In 2009 I all but abandoned poor Eudaemonia. I didn't know what to say.

Now, I think I do -- at least here on this blog.

I've finished twenty-one books since my last post about reading. Catching up won't be easy, but I have a plan. I'll write about one book a day until I'm caught up.

For those of you who are new here, understand that I'm not a book reviewer or literary blogger. I'm not even a college graduate. I'm just someone who likes books. My intent in writing about them is to capture my personal and not always rational opinions about the books. I don't presume to assign literary merit. I put a great deal of thought into what I read, so my going in position is that they're all "good" (as meaningless a word as it is).

Here's the list of books I've read, but not yet talked about. Tomorrow, I'll begin.

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles

Saturday by Ian McEwan

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Night Train by Martin Amis

The Brain Dead Megaphone by George Saunders

Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas
Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Mark Twain in Hawaii by Grove Day

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel by Steven C.
Weisenburger

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Catholics by Brian Moore

Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the relationship between reading and writing and of course -- about the books.