The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon

So this guy I had a massive crush on in high school (he had nearly my exact taste in books; clearly it was meant to be) really liked The Crying of Lot 49. I finally got around to getting my hands on it, eager to read it if only to please my memory of this fellow.
The Crying of Lot 49 is about Oedipa Maas, a 28-ish year old woman who is suddenly notified that her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, has died and that his will names her co-executor of his estate. Inverarity, as Oedipa discovers, was an extremely talented real estate mogul who pretty much owned California. He also may or may not have been involved in a centuries-old, underground and rather violent postal organization called the Trystero, which itself may or may not exist. Saying more would give things away. It is very complicated.
The Crying of Lot 49 is essentially about the horribly unsettling effect of uncertainty. Conspiracy theories emerge as an attempt to explain isolation, alienation, empty relationships and meaningless hatred. America and indeed the entire western world are scrutinized through this lens. It is self-critical and quite cutting. Pynchon is clever with his references to literature, history and American culture. He is also incredibly funny. He has characters named Dr. Hilarius, Mucho Maas, Mike Fallopian and Genghis Cohen. The man has a sense of humor.
Overall, I wasn't as blown out of the water by Lot 49 as I thought I would be, mostly because the book is only just over 150 pages long. Pynchon writes like a cross between Vonnegut, Kerouac and the beat poets (except in prose), which, if you like that sort of thing, is just about the best thing ever. It makes for intriguing passages, but he rushes through the writing when he's trying to make plot points happen. The sudden shifts between events-- and there are a lot of events-- leave the linear plot a bit annoying to follow. I much preferred the poetry in Oedipa's head.
Still, the more I think about Lot 49, the more I like it. I certainly liked it well enough to want to read more Pynchon. His first novel, V., is approximately a million pages long, but I'm finding that exciting rather than daunting.

Mao II

Mao II
By Don DeLillo

I think Don DeLillo might have superpowers. Although his ability to write dialog that makes me want to kill myself on the off-chance Heaven exists and is filled with his characters is close, that's not what I'm talking about. I think Don DeLillo is psychic. I don't mean he-picks-up-the-phone-before-it-rings psychic, I mean really psychic. What makes me think that? Mao II is about a lot of things (as all of his books I've read are) but one of the major themes is terrorism and it's relation to art, which isn't that strange since terrorism is a major motif in our current society. The Twin Towers also figure largely in Mao II, hardly a scene goes by in the New York setting without them being referenced. This is only strange because Mao II was published in 1991, 10 years before 9/11. That's why I think Don DeLillo is psychic. I think Don DeLillo predicted 9/11.
Okay, I don't actually think that, but it was fucking eerie. It's strange how something that happened 10 years after the book's publication can permanently change its meaning. I'd read the passages about terrorism and think of how someone would have read them 10 years earlier. At the time, musing on the rivalry between terrorists and novelists must have seemed like an exercise in stilted philosophical musing, while now it cuts to the very core.
Mao II is about the reclusive novelist Bill Gray, his two assistants and a photographer named Brita who takes pictures only of novelists. Bill is her toughest find, as he has secluded himself pretty damn well. But the two immediately hit it off and their dialog is some of the best I've ever read. The discuss death and artistic representation so without small talk that it's made clear they aren't two individual characters, but rather two incarnations of the same god who happened to run into each other. That god is DeLillo.
The book makes points about the nature of crowd behavior contrasting (one of Gray's assistants was a Moonie) with isolation in a fascinating way. Both focus around the central theme of death. When Gray is roped into trying to resolve a terrorist hostage scenario, he runs up against the edge of his isolation as well as his capabilities as a novelist.
Mao II does have a few problems. DeLillo seems uncommitted to the character of Scott, Gray's assistant. He seems out of place in the novel. DeLillo also writes of the sexual relationships like he's bored with them and I couldn't help but react the same way.
But overall Mao II is an incredibly quick and engaging read (I think it took me two days). Someone else should go read it so I have someone to discuss it with, because it's that kind of book.

What?

What? 108 Zen Poems
By Ko Un

Working at McKeldin library affords me the opportunities of a book whore—to hold short fantastic affairs between myself and dozens of books, per hour, without commitment; But I remember the good ones. Ko Un's What? - 108 Zen Poems was one such book. A calligraphic Zen painting of a sword on the creamy skin of the pocket-sized book caught my eye. "I must have this book," I told myself. I checked it out that evening.
I read it in one sitting and loved every single minute of it, the first book of poetry dedicated to one person I have ever read. It was of course translated and had several introductions from Ginsberg, Zen Master Thich Naht Hanh, and others. Their introductions of Ko Un gave me the perfect frame of mind—though I had learned about and practiced several faces of Buddhism in previous years—to read and fully enjoy Ko’s poetry. But words and praises about a person can only do so much; some other deeper bond drew me to What?
Existential-Zazen theory...
The nothingness of existence that prevails in Zen Buddhism radiates between the lines of almost every poem in this book. This, however, is not to say the collection is a cold bleak outlook on life, it is more like a set of realist/naturalist/meditative blips of clarity from a very well-experienced Korean (that’s my endorsement for Ko Un).

"A Rosary

Angulimala was a devil of a cutthroat.
The fellow
sliced off the fingers of the people that he killed
and wore them
strung dingle-dangle around his neck,
including his father's fingers.

That was a real hundred-eight bead rosary.
Every bead on the string
a life."

"A Rosary" was the meeting point for the two of us: a metaphor for, and an agreeable way a Zen warrior ought to live in his time and culture. I think this is the most potent poem in What?
He, a Korean "jail-bird" rogue Bodhisattva, and I, an Americanized Africa-Born Romantic and anti-intellectual, through but a few words that allowed for cosmic transcendence, came to a mutual understanding and view on life. Check it out, maybe you'll find your own questions and answer to the question: What? [is this?]

The Inner Circle

The Inner Circle
By T.C. Boyle

I'm that "now-roommate" who gave Malcolm Drown for his birthday, and a few weeks ago, I loaned him A Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in exchange for his copy of The Inner Circle. I was extremely impressed with the writing in The Inner Circle, albeit the novel dragged on a little bit near the middle.
The plot involves a "fictionalized" account of the Kinsey studies that is being told in retrospect by John Milk, a narrator T.C. Boyle creates who explains his relationship to Kinsey as he transitions from a student into a fellow researcher on the team that records the sexual histories of thousands of subjects for what is now referred to as the Kinsey Report. Very early in the novel, you find out that Kinsey is a man of praxis who wants to sexually liberate the inner circle, which consists of the researchers and their wives, and most of humanity, but the sexual practices must remain discrete otherwise the credibility of the objective collection of interviews will be compromised.
I stopped wondering whether certain aspects of the novel are accurate or fictionalized because T.C. Boyle's characterization is complex so that the truth barely matters. The first person narration employed creates a fascinating profile for Milk. His strange sexuality and his alcoholism are just two aspects that Boyle explores in depth without making the passages seem forced. I don't want to ruin the sexual escapades of the book, so I'll just tell you that they become increasingly sensuous and will excite you regardless of your sexual preferences both through the aesthetics of the writing and the titillating content that is never crude or excessive. The use of smells in the book is fantastic whether John Milk is describing the smell of the office, a woman, or Prok's nasty herbal liquors. I'd recommend getting high before you read a few of the sex scenes later in the book; the experience becomes enveloping and I'd judge it as the most synaesthetic high read I've ever had.
The book isn't just an indulgent read for the pleasure seekers, although I was quite "aroused" during parts of the read. It raises interesting questions about the construction of sexual identity and what true sexual justice entails. Prok is a huge advocate of pansexuality and advocates that people should shed all of their indoctrination and respond to every sexual stimulus, yet John Milk and his wife, Iris, in particular have hang-ups over this premise. Despite the theory that Prok proclaims and John spews, Iris responds often very unpredictably to these claims and John too in the conclusion of the novel. Sexual liberation is more complicated than Prok simply declaring everyone pansexual and waiting for us all to fuck like bonobos. The social construction of sexuality and the indoctrination we all experience regarding proper gender and sexuality is powerful stuff that governs our psychological, even physiological responses.
The Inner Circle subtly explores this concept throughout the novel without using clunky terminology by contrasting all of these characters with Prok proclaiming we should fuck a lot with a lot of people a lot of the time. I mean, I'd like that revolution to happen immediately too, but I don't like vaginas all that much. Read the book and talk about it with lots of people of different sexualities and different genders. Oh, and religious fundamentalists. Definitely talk to them.

The Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude
By Jonathan Lethem


I found this book when the History Graduate Student Association had a book sale on the stairs of the building in which I had a British Lit class. Paperbacks were a buck apiece, which is, for me, a lot like setting up a discount crack house next door. I had read some reviews of this book and had seen some of his other titles in book stores and I figured it was worth the book. Plus I'm an addict, and until I check myself into some 12-step program, I'm going to keep buying more books than I can read.
In one of the reviews in the first few pages of the book, a critic says that Lethem loves words. This didn't seem right to me, I think it's closer to the truth to say he loves phrases. He'll repeat in the narration without prompting small sentences of pop-culture or personal meaning. He has characters do the same and the feeling constructed is similar to being in the middle of a crowd. The reader can pick up just fragments of what the entire city is saying.
Solitude tracks the life of Dylan Ebdus from his moving to Brooklyn as a small child into his late 30's. I can't decide if the book is about his whole life with the appropriate reverence given to his pre-teen and teenage years, or if it's about a white kid growing up without a mother in an all-black neighborhood that goes on too long into his adulthood.
Lethem creates a character in Dylan that is not only believable, but someone you want to succeed. I found myself scared to turn the page fearing something bad would happen to the protagonist.
The author's foray into magical realism (Dylan finds himself in possession that can make people fly and later makes him invisible) feels like a heavy-handed metaphor more than something he was really devoted to exploring. For someone that has such a great grip on realism, I'm not sure why he felt the need to stretch the boundaries in this work. The way he nails certain teen experiences, it's clear Lethem hasn't forgotten his own adolescence. He gets everything exactly right, from how it feels not to be in your friend's band to sitting stoned in your friend's basement scratching the bottom of a box of Nilla Wafers for crumbs.
The last 75 or so pages are devoted to Dylan's friend Mingus Rude who is the best character in the novel. Mingus is Dylan's best and only black friend. Their lives run parallel enough to notice but not so close that it's a central theme of the book. This is perhaps the strongest statement about race-relations in the book, the difference between the two kids with similar situations and how they turn out, one white, one black.
The book does go on a little too long and a little too far into Dylan's adult life. While his childhood still haunts him, I just didn't think it was necessary to extend the book that far to make that point. I can't blame the author though, once Lethem decides that he's writing about Dylan's whole life, it must be hard to stop.