Horizon

Surprised to see Gravity's Rainbow in there- I threw my copy in the bin the other week. I've been tripping over it for years and its been boring me for years, so I thought i'd feng shui it and it was a good feeling.

I think I buy Gravity's Rainbow once every five years with the idea I'm going to get beyond the first 75 pages; then I end up giving it away.

I've got more than halfway over the course of...several years.

I like it a lot.

Especially the names. Pointsman, Roger Mexico, Slothrop, Teddy Bloat. Dr. Hilarious...that's from one of his other novels, isn't it? Crying of Lot 49, maybe?

It gets incredibly hard to read in parts. Past the war and into the whole Schwarzkommando thing, that part depressed me horribly for some reason.

After reading through a fair amount of English professor's effusions over this book, I have the impression that they worship it because it flaunts Pynchon's training as a scientist. Just a hunch.

All this said, I think it's a great book so far and hope to finish it some day.

Do you think Pynchon rivals Joyce as the author most people would like to have read (or would like other people to think they have read) but few particularly enjoy the experience of reading?

Most people I speak to about Pynchon just say he's boring straight off, whereas Joyce, I suppose because he's super-venerated, gets better reactions. I actually enjoy reading Joyce, he's far less diffuse than Pynchon with a lot more to say I suspect (it's like that Amis Jnr thing of developing a dazzling way to say very little). I always get the impression with Pynchon that he sees the game of post Joyce fiction as going madder and bigger and more verbose. A sort of arms race mentality not out of place for a mid-century writer and, of course, an American. A good novelist could have got the first fifteen pages into about two. You'd think if what he had to say was so important, he might have made things less hard on the reader. Can't remember who said it but 'good in vain is the book the reader lays aside'.

Anyone can read Joyce and Pynchon. Just pick up Dubliners or Crying of Lot 49. Those are both easy.

On the other hand, how many modern books have had those horrible "companions" written for them, meant to be read along with the original, made for those poor souls for whom the reading of literature will forever and inextricably be mixed up in their minds with the experience of doing homework and who have no negative capability?

Excuse me, I should have said, "...and who are negatively incapable."

doing homework

That's the trouble with 'doing' books at school- it puts people off them.

I always get the impression with Pynchon that he sees the game of post Joyce fiction as going madder and bigger and more verbose.

Exactly. Pynchon pouring it on because he can; Joyce singing because he must, being, after all, an Irish poet.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

I don't know about anyone else, though I know my experience is by no means uncommon, but my introduction to reading Shakespeare involved sitting in a classroom listening to incredibly bored teenagers reading parts aloud, stumbling constantly over unfamiliar words and utterly destroying the meter with a thoroughness I never otherwise would have thought possible. All the while the teacher got to doze at the front of the class.

We were always supposed to be getting something important out of whatever we read in school. Did any teacher ever teach the joy of reading?

It always struck me as odd when people talked about reading as if it didn't matter what you were reading. I used to grit my teeth when people said "I love to read." But now with all the research coming out about the physiological effects of watching TV, I'd like to formally apologize (right here, where I can be certain none of them will ever see it) to all those people I scoffed at. There is something about reading, I suppose it's a sort of meditative state.

Don't you think, though, that it could be taught that some people arrange words better than others, and that for the greatest pleasure, those are the people you should read?

I'm skeptical of the idea that people can be taught to take pleasure in something, especially systematically.

My suspicion is that most people who don't like to read find reading difficult. If the system were better at teaching people how to read, and if it stopped shoving things down people's throats in the most horrible, crude and destructive ways, then we'd probably be a more literate nation.

listening to incredibly bored teenagers reading parts aloud, stumbling constantly over unfamiliar words and utterly destroying the meter

Try sitting in a classroom in Southeast Texas listening to those same teenagers plow through Shaw's transcription of Eliza Doolittle's accent. None of whom possess the faintest idea of the sounds of the speech that Shaw is trying to convey.

some people arrange words better than others, and that for the greatest pleasure, those are the people you should read

I don't think that the market bears that out. If you look at the books that have escaped into the greater American marketplace (e.g. Left Behind or Da Vinci Code), they are universally criticised for their prose. Plainly they are read for pleasure, and I suspect that their readers find far more pleasure in reading them than they did when assigned Lord of the Flies in high school.

Anyone can read Joyce and Pynchon. Just pick up Dubliners or Crying of Lot 49. Those are both easy.

I was really talking about "difficult" Pynchon and "difficult" Joyce. I've read Lot 49, but I don't regard myself as having really read any Pynchon.

I don't think that the market bears that out. If you look at the books that have escaped into the greater American marketplace (e.g. Left Behind or Da Vinci Code), they are universally criticised for their prose. Plainly they are read for pleasure, and I suspect that their readers find far more pleasure in reading them than they did when assigned Lord of the Flies in high school.

It would be interesting to see what would happen to Lord of the Flies if it were marketed the way the Da Vinci Code is, or if it had a vast word-of-mouth network of people who liked it because of its ideology.

Then again, maybe people look for different kinds of pleasure. I just recently saw most of the movie Left Behind and, boy, was it boring!

I was having fun playing around with Amazon's new "Statistically Improbable Phrase" feature (which if you haven't yet you should too), and managed to get from The Companion to Crying of Lot 49 (yes, there is even one for that book) to this sample of modern Freudianism. Sigh.

Maybe. I tend to think that if one of the goals of education is to convince people to read for pleasure, it might be more productive to pick books that are actually pleasant.

Pleasure I guess is not very defining. When I say I read for pleasure I mean I enjoy the music of language. I also like a good story and I enjoy a good joke. Story and joke are also not very defining.

Why is that my sister, who possesses the same education as I, enjoys Steven King and Dan Brown, and turns her nose up at much of what I read? Why do some people have an inclination towards "literature" while others of like upbringing and instruction don't?

I tend to think that if one of the goals of education is to convince people to read for pleasure, it might be more productive to pick books that are actually pleasant.

Problem is I don't think Left Behind is pleasant. And conversely I think Gravity's Rainbow is pleasant enough in parts to make me want to finish it some day. So I guess the market hasn't got you very far on this question.

Why is that my sister, who possesses the same education as I, enjoys Steven King and Dan Brown, and turns her nose up at much of what I read?

I would assume it's because they offer a kind of pleasure you don't have much taste for? Or perhaps you do, but good prose is so important to you that King's bad prose ruins the pleasure you might otherwise get out of reading him?

The whole exercise would be more fun if the list were longer: it's not possible to define greatness in such a way as to produce a real surprise, because the list itself is so unremarkably predictable.

Pynchon is exhausting but *Gravity's Rainbow* is worth the ride. I don't btw think *V* is. Of course Pynchon has the same weakness as William Gibson in that he builds up to a mysterious "kreplach" revelation so dramatically that no matter what the actual revelation is, it's going to seem disappointing after such an intro. In the case of *Gravity's Rainbow* of course, it's more like 'weird, sick, creepy, and disappointing.' But Pynchon's multilayered surrealism in that book does capture something about war and war-related industries. He's sort of like Kurt Vonnegut's better-educated, heftier cousin.

My sister, who--on paper at least--is far better educated than I, despises the literary and hoovers up popular fiction (those forensic thrillers that sell by the ton and things like Harry Potter). I think it comes down to what you get out of aesthetics. If you are immune to literary aesthetics, you're not going to get much out of Shakespeare, or any of the canon (sorry Martha for mentioning the undemocratic canon) but everyone likes a story- hence airport novels selling like a ton and written so boringly- Hemingway must take the blame for that.

At Primary school (aged about 9 or 10) we did the Merchant of Venice- everyone having a part (girls, Martha please note, getting all the best parts except Shylock). I remember enjoying it- waiting to say one's line etc. We were put to learning Portia's Quality of mercy speech for homework. twenty years later I looked at the play again and was amazed how much I remembered.
I think the environment you learn in is the most important thing- aged 13 in comprehensive school copies of Julius Caesar were passed round (one between two) our anarchic, practically uncontrollable class- years later when I went back to that play I could remember nothing about it except the Ides of March; it did bring back the shouting and the long fruitless power struggles in the classroom.

This is probably immodest, but it says something worth saying (I think) about the Shakespeare part of this thread.

http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=394134

I went back to the school some months later and did The Tempest with another class of forceful ten-year-olds. Perhaps the thing that pleased me most was the teacher's observation that the children played Caliban and Prospero during their lunch break.