by Thomas Pynchon (1973)

2023 reads, 12/12:

Thirty years ago, Martin Scorsese published an opinion piece in the New York Times, defending filmmakers, authors, and other artists whose “style gets in the way of [their] storytelling.” While this piece was mainly a rebuttal to an opinion piece on Federico Fellini, Scorsese lists Thomas Pynchon as one such artist who falls under this category. And after spending almost 50 hours with Gravity’s Rainbow, I’m here to say I agree and appreciate his defense.

I’ve ventured into Pynchon’s work before with The Crying of Lot 49 and Inherent Vice, and I loved them both, so it only made sense that I attempt Gravity’s Rainbow, in its 50th year of publication. Continuing Pynchon’s setting of alternative histories, this book takes place at the end of World War II in an alternate, dream-like, paranoid version of the European theatre.

“He sits tonight by his driftwood fire in the cellar of the onion-topped Nikolaikirche, listening to the sea. Stars hang among the spaces of the great Wheel, precarious to him as candles and goodnight cigarettes.”

The first part of the book, “Beyond the Zero,” was the most difficult to me. Pynchon loves to invoke hysteron proteron (Greek: “later earlier”) at all scales in this book, but mainly in this first section. Individual phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and whole chapters are succumbed to this reversal in time: effect first, cause later. It’s even posed within the first few pages: “Screaming holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?”

Pieces start to come together as you read, with connections being made right up to the end. Passages will run off track (example: the introduction of main character Katje, and then immediately being whisked back to the time of her ancestor and learning how he eradicated the dodo birds whilst envisioning them coming together and converting to Christianity). Its twists and turns aren’t for everybody, but everything is written for a reason. As I mentioned in my TCoL49 review, he writes how we think, re-experiencing whole memories in seconds.

“Connection? Of course there’s one. But we don’t talk about it.”

And that’s not to say that GR isn’t slightly prophetic as well. About 200 pages in, starting from the beginning of Part 2, the plot starts to kick in, and we find ourselves on cartoon-like cat-and-mouse chase throughout Parts 2 and 3. Along with control, themes such as War & technology, using The Rocket as a motif, constantly emerge. Pynchon’s books all have some inkling of paranoia as well, himself being a paranoid (you can count on one hand the number of photographs of him out there).

“...what do you think, it’s a children’s story? There aren’t any. The children are away dreaming, but the Empire has no place for dreams and it’s Adults Only in here tonight, here in this refuge with the lamps burning deep, in pre-Cambrian exhalation, savory as food cooking, heavy as soot. And 60 miles up the rockets hanging the measureless instant over the black North Sea before the fall, ever faster, to orange heat, Christmas star, in helpless plunge to Earth.”

Almost every sentence in GR has some reference to some historical event, person or slang that I’ve never heard of. Through reading I’ve learned about the Herero and Namaqua genocides, Kabbalist traditions, the Peenemunde slave camp, the Phoebus cartel (all historically factual, and some of which should have been taught in school) – all while reading actual rocket science. But this is not a textbook, there is a plot to be found here, with jokes and heartwarming moments as well.

“What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?”

But you don’t need to get every reference to have fun, and I wouldn’t have read this if it wasn’t enjoyable. I’m nowhere near a WWII history buff, and I never will be, but this was fun and even hilarious at times (examples: Pirate’s banana breakfast, Slothrop’s stream-of-consciousness trip down a toilet looking for his harmonica, and Snake, the unpredictably homicidal horse being paid off to not appear in the US rodeo circuits). His style does not hinder what he is trying to say, I actually think it helps. It’s the mini-episodes make this book fun, it’s the math and physics jokes that make this book enjoyable, it’s the literary acid trips (especially in Part 4) that make this book thought-provoking, and it’s the commentary on politics, War, and control that make this book worth it. His prose is like no other – upon finishing the book the realization hit that I may never read something like it again.

“Most people’s lives have ups and downs that are relatively gradual, a sinuous curve with first derivatives at every point. They’re the ones who never get struck by lightning. No real idea of cataclysm at all. But the ones who do get hit experience a singular point, a discontinuity in the curve of life—do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp? Infinity, that’s what! A-and right across the point, it’s minus infinity! How’s that for sudden change, eh?”

I’m not sure whether this review has convinced or deterred you, but if you fall in the former camp, the best pieces of advice I have are (1) borrow the eBook from your library (likely no one else is reading it, lol) and read on a Kindle for quick Wikipedia lookups and German translations, (2) read this guide after every chapter to recall the important plot points, and (3) just let your imagination run wild with him. But if this book doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, and you’ve made it to the end of this review, then at least read possibly my favorite quote of the whole book:

“They have found a house in the stay-away zone, under the barrage balloons south of London. The town, evacuated in ’40, is still “regulated”—still on the Ministry’s list. Roger and Jessica occupy the place illegally, in a defiance they can never measure unless they’re caught. Jessica has brought an old doll, seashells, her aunt’s grip filled with lace knickers and silk stockings. Roger’s managed to scare up a few chickens to nest in the empty garage. Whenever they meet here, one always remembers to bring a fresh flower or two. The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There’s never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly—most times they’re too paranoid to risk a fire—but it’s something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.”

#readingyear2023 #american #physicallyowned #wtf #pynchon

by Clarice Lispector (1943)

2023 reads, 11/12:

“One day she split into two, grew restless, started going out to look for herself.”

I was overjoyed to finally get back into the mystic prose of Clarice Lispector after ending last year with her final book, The Hour of the Star. Her first book, Near to the Wild Heart, written at only 23 years old, ‘follows’ the story of the amoral Joanna. From childhood to adulthood, we don't learn about her in a linear fashion, but in fleeting memories throughout her life. We know everything, yet nothing, about her; Lispector writes a minimal plot at best, opting instead for a spiritual and existential journey through the psyche of Joana through these vignettes of her life. As an example, my favorite chapter, ‘The Encounter with Otávio,’ takes place in the few minutes you are awake in the middle of the night, the ones you don’t even remember after you wake up.

“The dense, dark night was cut down the middle, split into two black blocks of sleep. Where was she? Between the two pieces, looking at them (the one she had already slept, and the one she had yet to sleep), isolated in the timeless and the spaceless, in an empty gap. This stretch would be subtracted from her years of life.”

Joana is an extremely complex character, as she is introspective yet wild, reserved yet disturbed, even violent at time; yet her actions and interactions with others (her aunt, her teacher, her husband Otávio, his old friend Lídia, etc.) take a back seat to her thoughts. Lispector even went as far as to include thoughts from the perspective of these other characters, which helped break apart all the material on Joana.

Towards the end, we are inundated with the phrase de profundis (Latin: “from the depths”), encapsulating all of Joana’s thoughts and decisions we’ve read thus far. Things start to make sense now. The remainder of the book then floods with these stream-of-consciousness monologues ‘from the depths’ of Joana, her visions and thoughts constantly bombarding the reader. In these sections, you must let the words flow through you; I even found myself having to reread passages. This style of writing is a hit or miss, but for me, I can’t wait to dive into other works of “Hurricane Clarice.”

“The two of them sank into a solitary, calm silence. Years passed perhaps. Everything was so limpid as an eternal star and they hovered so quietly that they could feel future time rolling lucid inside their bodies with the thickness of the long past which instant by instant they had just lived.”

#readingyear2023 #physicallyowned #lispector

edited and translated by Robert Hass (1994)

2023 reads, 9/12:

Poetry was really interesting when we learned about it in school, but it was never my favorite unit in lit class because it was taught with so many ‘rules’ (limericks, acrostics, triplets, etc.). However, the biggest ‘rule’ drilled into our heads was that haikus follow the 5-7-5 syllable structure. Reading these poems dating back to the ‘birth’ of haiku, with masters Bashō, Buson, and Issa, has further opened my mind to what a haiku can truly be. The journal entries from each of these masters were also super interesting, and ended up enriching their respective poetry.

#readingyear2023 #physicallyowned #poetry

by Don DeLillo (1985)

2023 reads, 7/12:

Death, consumerism, and academic elitism, all set against the backdrop of a hyperreal 1980s America, comprise this satirical novel revolving around Jack Gladney and his stepfamily. Much like We Have Always Lived in the Castle|89724, I actually watched the White Noise movie first on Netflix, without knowing anything prior; this made me want to read the source material to further understand the main themes and anything else the movie might have missed (although I feel the need to say that Greta Gerwig absolutely nailed the role of Babette).

Part I of the book, “Waves and Radiation,” sets in place the many themes throughout. We meet Murray, a new professor at the college where Jack teaches. Through the process of trying to solidify his own “Elvis Studies” program, we quickly descend into a satire of academia. The multitude of superficial pop-culture departments at this college (Hitler studies, Elvis studies, cinematic car crash seminars, to name a few), and the way the professors talk to one another is extremely exaggerated and elitist, albeit entertaining. These scenes were done very well in the movie as well.

"‘We're all brilliant. Isn't that the understanding around here? You call me brilliant, I call you brilliant. It's a form of communal ego.’"

Reading “Part II: The Airborne Toxic Event,” it’s hard to not be reminded of the 2023 Ohio train derailment or any other man-made disasters we learn about in school. The book portrays the negatives of this growth of technology and mass media in the 1980s, leading to a hysteria and borderline obsession over these types of disasters.

The events in Part II lead right into Part III, 'Dylarama,' and it's here that leads to many interpretations as to what the titular “white noise” is. Of course, it could refer to the constant background noise (both visual and audible) of advertisements, mass media, and the metaphorical rubbernecking of man-made disasters. Or even “Mr. Grey,” one who Jack sees in “extraneous flashes,” one whose body “flares with random distortion.” But I think that Jack’s (and Babette’s) fear of death is the white noise – it’s always around them, further exacerbated by everything previously mentioned; Hitler, Elvis, the airborne toxic event, Mr. Gray, and even the advertisements trying to sell you a better life.

"‘How do you plan to spend your resurrection?’ he said, as though asking about a long weekend coming up. ‘We all get one?’"

Also, how awesome are these movie posters?

#readingyear2023 #physicallyowned #american #book2screen

by Hunter S. Thompson (1973)

2023 reads, 6/12:

“Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

On the surface, this reads like a tamer version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, although with just as much gonzo, as this novel chronicles Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 democratic primaries and the resulting race between incumbent Nixon and nominee George McGovern. Within the text, Thompson throws in his own haphazard accounts of his time as Rolling Stones’ journalist for the Democratic party.

“...back on the Campaign Trail… running late, as usual: left hand on the wheel and the other on the radio dial, seeking music, and a glass of iced Wild Turkey spilling into my crotch on every turn.”

It starts off a little slow, because like any primary race, you spend the time meeting and learning about an entire cast of politicians. But things pick up as that cast dwindles and as Thompson gets closer to the Democratic and Republican primaries, then to the race between Nixon and McGovern, and finally the resulting aftermath. It was enlightening to see how, over the course of the novel, the campaign took a toll on Thompson (which he never hid from us, remarking “…the last thing I wanted to think about was the grim, inescapable spectre of two more frenzied months on the campaign trail”). To me, that perfectly reflected the fatigue we’ve all been having these past few elections.

“Yes… and… uh, where were we? I have a bad tendency to rush off on mad tangents and pursue them for fifty or sixty pages that get so out of control that I end up burning them, for my own good.”

Thompson gives us an up-close and personal look at the election, with some comprehensive political analysis and interviews, while also remarking on the danger of running for president and bashing the American political system. This work was described as “eerily prophetic,” and while there is no one-to-one analog between present and past politicians, I certainly agreed that entire concepts and commentaries in the campaign heavily reflected that of 2016 and 2020. Of course, that could just be the fact that some things never change.

#readingyear2023 #american #govpol #humor #physicallyowned

by Durian Sukegawa (2013)

2023 reads, 3/12:

“‘All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could. I feel sure the day will come when you can say: this is my life.’”

A really wonderful slice-of-life read. I originally saw this book in an article titled 10 Books That Feel Like Wes Anderson Movies and honestly it hit the mark pretty well. For a novel like this, it was the perfect mix of both dialogue and internal musings from the main character, and general descriptive passages of the world surrounding him. Most of the novel takes place at the small dorayaki shop where the main character works.

Without spoiling, this book also handled really well how a certain group of people were treated unfairly in Japan, and the aftermath of the resulting government intervention. This was something I had never known about before, and even prompted me to do future research on the topic. Follow this link to learn more and possibly be spoiled.

Despite the hardships of all three of the characters, however, this was a bittersweet-yet heartwarming story. While this book will certainly give you mixed emotions, the writing and story are very well done – an absolute pleasure to read.

#readingyear2023 #feelgood #physicallyowned

by Clarice Lispector (1977)

2022 reads, 20/20:

“Who was she asking? God? She didn’t think about God, God didn’t think about her. God belongs to those who manage to get him.”

Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star is a short but intense read about Macabéa, a poor girl who grew up living in the slums of Brazil. She is now a typist, living with four other roommates, and the most basic of human needs (including sadness and having a future) are “luxuries” to her. Paradoxically, however, since she has never experienced true happiness, she thus does not know she is unhappy. This novella explores her life, upbringing, and relationships with her aunt, roommates, and boyfriend Olímpico.

But Lispector takes this story to a whole new level of meta by playing with narrative in a groundbreaking way. Another character, Rodrigo S.M. (introducing himself by claiming he is one of the more important characters), constantly breaks from his narration to comment, lament, or flat-out complain about how he feels about the story, about writing in general, or about Macabéa. Flavors of existentialism and identity crises are interspersed, and through the introspective and dream-like writing style, the story shifts focus from Macabéa to the relationship between Rodrigo and Macabéa (could Rodrigo be doing this on purpose?).

This sort of narrative creates multiple layers of story, a third-person tale inside of a first-person novella – and I’d say that we could even extend the layers to include me, the reader of the story, and Lispector, the author of the narrator of the story (this becomes even more complicated when you realize Macabéa was based off Lispector’s childhood).

“…I substitute the act of death for a symbol of it. A symbol that can be summed up in a deep kiss but not on a rough wall but mouth-to-mouth in the agony of pleasure that is death. I, who symbolically die several times just to experience the resurrection.”

It’s short enough such that I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those who want to explore a new writing style, and what it means to narrate a story.

2022 Epilogue: This was a great year for reading. I’ve read so many books that have been on my radar for a while, as well as some unexpected finds. My top three books this year would probably be The Crying of Lot 49, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Hour of the Star – but by no means does this discount every amazing read I’ve had this year. Excited for 2023 (and to finally finish the Harry Potter series…)!

#readingyear2022 #physicallyowned #lispector

by Douglas R. Hofstadter (1979)

2022 reads, 19/20:

“This is axiom”

The above quote is not from this book, but instead, the final lyric in the final song off Bon Iver’s 2011 album, Bon Iver, Bon Iver. These three words encapsulate everything that Justin Vernon was trying to say not only in that whole song, but the whole album: we are here, and in this place, we are self-evident. In math, an axiom is the strongest statement you can make, something that cannot be proved because of its self-evidence (for example the first equality axiom, which states $x = x$, i.e. a number equals itself). And much like I am comparing this foundational mathematical term to music, Hofstadter does the same in his book Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Hofstadter masterfully weaves Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Bach’s fugues, and Escher’s drawings together to create a map between the neurological structure of the brain and the rise of artificial intelligence. His starting point is defining a ‘strange loop,’ a type of self-reference which leads you back to the original statement, and works from there. If you hold on for the whole ride, his final chapters provide an interesting and original take on minds and machines. In between these chapters lie dialogues between a slew of characters such as the tortoise and Achilles, which are not just entertaining, but also excellent at priming you for the ideas about to be introduced in the next chapter. Some did not enjoy the dialogues, but I thought they were some of the best parts of the book.

At times, this does read like a textbook, but it’s not dry or boring at all; Hofstadter is inviting us to try to get to the point before he gets there, which makes reading GEB almost conversational. I started to lose a bit of interest in the latter half of the Part II, solely because I am not super interested in genetics; to me, Hofstadter is at his best when he is writing about logic, paradoxes, and writing dialogues with hidden meanings. Others would disagree, however, as some really enjoy the neurological aspects, and don’t see the point of the math. And as I mentioned, you don’t really get to the crux of what Hofstadter wants to convey in this book until the final three chapters, which could turn off some people.

Anyone who has an interest in math, puzzles, computer science, neurology, genetics, or even art would at least moderately be interested in what Hofstadter is saying. By no means is a formal background in math required, you just need interest. The reason it took me so long to finish this was not because it was boring, in fact the opposite – his ideas need time to marinate before you go on. In this book, the journey was much better than the destination.

#readingyear2022 #math #science #physicallyowned

by Albert Camus (1947)

“I'm in a bad way”

As the title suggests, The Plague is about just that – a four-part novel about a sickness afflicting the French-Algerian town of Oran, and the resulting lockdown that takes place (sound familiar?). Part I was a bit slow, but it’s needed, because Parts II-IV really ramp up in both story and overall tone. Part III was probably my favorite – there were some beautifully written passages, and it is here that I really started to sympathize with the characters in what they were going through.

An interesting note on tone: while the town goes through the horrors of the plague, the unknown narrator takes on quite a calm voice, an interesting choice by Camus. But I think it helped to understand the narrator better – for example, in the absolute depths of the plague, when the town had to burn bodies instead of hosting funerals (due to the sheer volume of deaths each day), the narrator essentially keep their cool when in the depths of it all – but it stuck out to me as more of a defense mechanism than indifference:

“True, one could always refuse to face this disagreeable fact, shut one's eyes to it, or thrust it out of mind, but there is a terrible cogency in the self-evident; ultimately it breaks down all defenses.”

It's a dense book, and while it may seem like there is a lot of filler in the novel, it is necessary to understand each of the characters, as this book is just as much of a character analysis as it is a novel. As such, the plot will take a backseat at times to go in detail of what characters are thinking, feeling, and how they are reacting to the events unfurling around them – something that I did not appreciate until I finished the novel.

#readingyear2022 #absurdism #physicallyowned

by Kurt Vonnegut (1968)

2022 reads, 16/20:

A must-read for any Vonnegut fan – I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, as I’m normally not a short story person (maybe because the last collection I read was The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic, which just didn’t really do it for me). But while those stories varied immensely in style and prose, this seemingly diverse set of stories are all connected together by Vonnegut’s signature social commentary via black humor.

Written and published anywhere from 1950-1968, they span a range of genres, including sci-fi shorts (“The Euphio Question”, “EPICAC”, “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”), dystopian futures (“Harrison Bergeron”, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, “Unready to Wear”), suburban dramas (“The Hyannis Port Story”, “Next Door”, “The Foster Portfolio”), and even purely heartwarming/emotional stories (“Long Walk to Forever”, “More Stately Mansions”, “The Manned Missiles”).

These stories are held together by the thread of critiquing the society and politics of the American dream in the 1950s. Many seem to have allusions of specific events in the early to mid-20th century, such as the development of the atomic bomb, the space race, or the Great Depression. A good number of stories also commented on the post-war American workforce, and those reminded me very much of Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano.

Most of these were excellent reads, and all are worth reading, but here are my personal standouts:

• “Harrison Bergeron” (1960)
• “All The King’s Horses” (1951): had me on the edge of my seat!
• “The Euphio Question” (1951)
• “Deer in the Works” (1955): such a profound statement said in such a simple story
• “EPICAC” (1950)

#readingyear2022 #physicallyowned #shortstories #scifi