tired of running, let's walk for a bit

for those who knew me a little, and even a little is probably a lot for most folks who know me at all, and for the faithful here who do not have too short of an attention span, and for which i have no qualms in repeating: i absolutely love, love, and love thomas r. pynchon. not the most prolific of writers – he's published a seeming meager 7 books, some fairly mammoth in size, but which includes also one collection of early, formative short stories and one shortish novella, as well as releasing the occasional essays, criticism, and such, in 40 or so plus years – pynchon output has been more than bountiful that i still have a while to go before catching up with his phenomenal backlog.

anyway, this is not a(nother) love note to tommy p, actually quite the opposite. for a supposedly notorious recluse, pynchon in his new novel, called against the day, which is now part of his unread backlog, starts with an epigraph from thelonious monk, which reads: "it's always night, or we wouldn't need light." perfectly fine by itself in setting up pynchon's new opus. my principal objection is one of insincerity, in that with pynchon's staunch and well documented refusal to allow the public to glimpse his private life, he selects not something from monk's work, in which case, as monk is a jazz pianist, would doubtlessly be a challenge to epigraph, but instead something from monk's private life, in this case, a saying that he reportedly was frequently fond of sprinkling in his conversations. it stinks (slight, but surely) of an equivocation, a double standard. pynchon apparently found something essential in his hero's private life, probably something that granted him greater access to his hero's work, but himself refuses the prospect of something in his private world to be essential (or beneficial) to those who view him, his life and work, as heroic.

howeverz, right now i am about 1/3 into white teeth, zadie smith's much acclaimed first novel, a novel that kind of sucks so far. reason one:

before planting their asses back out to the curb, i sometimes listened enough to the occasional interloping duo of jehovah witnesses (they interlope typically in pairs) to know that most of zadie's representations of the jehovah witnesses are bunk. even if zadie's ears are not as indulgent or patient with the fanatics pounding on her door, whatever wikipedia forerunner that existed last century (library?) must have revealed to her in five measly minutes that the jehovah witnesses do not tiny silver cross, saint, pew, nor jesus freak - heck, they do not even hell. call it carelessness or intentional, but zadie plainly shortchanges intellectual integrity for a few good cracks and/or narrative convenience. and what had been done once for one thing, can be done again for any number of other things. that sort of compromise can make everything else suspect.

and that's not counting the overriding cynicism, superficiality, and self consciousness of her writing. but i have a ways to go with white teeth, so maybe good surprises are in store.

wait, more (time passes). now close to 1/2 way through, here is an example, partly, of how i read. i reach this excerpt: "to know at least one particular place, one particular period, from firsthand experience, eyewitness reports; to be the authority, to have time on your side, for once, for once." (emphasis in original). actually, let me first backtrack a bit and frame exactly what the fuck is going on. the heroes of sort in white teeth are the suppose odd couple archie and samad, friends whose friendship was forged by operating the same tank during the waning days of ww2, currently (in the 70 - late 80's setting of the novel's "present") neighbors, and while at o'connell's poolroom, drinking buddies. o'connell's being the place of the particular place and post ww2 through the novel's present setting being the particular period. and that excerpt presents the how, namely the "firsthand experience, eyewitness reports", for the intimacy the two dudes feel for their watering hole.

okay, now back to my shtick. the novel proceeds by presenting a chronology for o'connell's; a chronology that kicks off with the year 1952. 1952, as a testament to my inability to trust, stopped me instantly and made me reverse course to find where and when exactly archie and samad reunited in london after their friendly relations stalled with the close of ww2 (i was struck by the use of "eyewitness" and its applicability, but that's another separate gripe), and well after 1952 was my best remembrance. took some time, but close to the beginning of white teeth, i found: "their wartime friendship had been severed by thirty years of separation across continents, but in the spring of 1973..." question marks abound.

how does 1973 minus 1945 (that's when ww2 ended) equal 30 years? seriously, "wartime friendship had been severed by thirty years of separation across continents, but in the spring of 1973." (emphases added). that's 1973, and they met sometime in 1945; more precisely, post april 1945. 1973 minus 1945 equals... 28 years? best case scenario give or take a year, but definitely not 30 years. oh, you say i nitpicking too much? well, zadie's writing clearly plays with a minutia capturing, inventorying, journal documenting style: evident by the aforementioned use of the chronology, evident by the second freaking sentence of the novel having "at 0627 hours on january 1, 1975", evident by "eight-thirty a.m., the first wednesday of september, 1984", evident by a lot of those sort of touches through the book. if zadie is going to play off at being precise about things, she did not have a calculator handy?

yet i take that back, and say i'm not really calling zadie out for this (as i did for her miscue regarding jehovah witness). no one is perfect, except perhaps: (1) certain religion's illusions, and even then i value god for his/her friendship more than anything else; and (2) certain women, and that's because, at a given time, they seem beautiful and i want to fuck. moreover, the miscalculation is more clerical in nature (the jehovah witness thing is more artistic/literary choice) that zadie might reasonably be careless about. assigning culpability here, the editor should have done his* job better. he did not have a fucking calculator handy?

putting it all together: reading is fun, ain't it?


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(* per google, a mister simon prosser)