Most of the dialogue I read on Substack, unfortunately, lacks nuance or the sure touch of authenticity. It wants too badly to tell rather than show. See, that’s not how people really talk in real life. It may be serviceable, but it’s rarely gripping.

REALISTIC CADENCE

First: Fragments. People talk in fragments. Short stuff. Bad grammar. Right? Umm… true. I guess. Guess so. No doubt. That’s it. The real. People really do it that way. They repeat, they repeat stuff and --uh-- stammer. They are thinking and speaking at the same time. It’s got a rhythm. Their voice, their point of view, it kinda comes out. It comes in bursts of thought. Maybe, maybe they pull an idiom out of their memory. They try it. They hear it. They like how it sounds. Or not. So it was like that, then. Now it’s…now. They switch up tense. You know? You know how, sometimes, you change to second person? You do it. Right? Because well, we all do. They’re talking and…thoughts gather. By saying it outloud they figure out what they really want to say and then-- try again.

SUBTEXT AND DESIRE

Second, consider subtext. Always remember that when people talk to each other, it’s ever and forever about what they WANT even though —especially though— they almost never say it so plainly or directly. Never. Sometimes they know what they want on the surface but they don’t know why they want it. Other times the subtext is apparent to everyone else but them. More often, it’s just not polite… so they pretend, they prevaricate, they feign. People have desires they can’t admit, or articulate, or only vaguely understand. Because: humans.

When you write, never have your characters or your narrator say much directly. Avoid it like the plague of the page. Yet too often I find myself shaking my head and wondering outloud to the gods of fiction, “Why is this person telling me directly what they’re feeling? Or imposing their interpretation on me?” It’s annoying to any sensible reader.

Even the simplest thing someone might say has a subtext, a desire to shape how someone sees them, an emotion they think is important to express. That’s true even if they can’t say it directly, because to say it directly would be vulnerable or uncouth. Or dangerous. Or disrespectful. Social mores say: don’t make demands. But people’s hearts say: I must, or I will die of frustration. I will die. That’s the conflict everytime, and it’s a conflict between the literal-minded but pleasant minnows swimming upon mild social currents versus the darker subtext shark swimming below, all teeth and forward motion to stay alive.

If you can’t analyze your own writing, and your character’s speech, in that context… then maybe you are not such a great observer of human nature. Maybe you want to write just to tell the world you exist. But you won’t be a great writer unless you can subjugate your desire to sound smart (through the mouths of your characters) to the greater demand of capturing life as it is lived by real human beings. And if you have no real insight about how humans really are… why would a reader want to read your work?

That’s a writer’s true value proposition: you see and hear and understand the nuances of homo sapien behavior and the world at large, and you can communicate it a powerful way which elicits an epiphany or catharsis in the reader.

Often, the number one way to do that which delights readers is via dialogue. The push and pull of humans in social settings and the subtext they express while doing so. Most often, it’s not what a person says on the surface at all. At all.

To that degree, there is a valuable social skill for you to have as an observant writer who wants to produce dialogue which grabs readers and sounds true: always ask, “how does these words allow a character or a narrator to express their wants… without saying any of it quite directly?”

As an author, you should be a student of human nature, naturally. So learn to “read” people (real humans) and figure out their true desires from what they say. Your dialogue will sound more realistic if you can do that.

Without a doubt, one way to practice that skill is to read a lot of good literature and see if you can infer and guess implied truths from what the characters says. The subtext of their statements.

Notice that the best authors are always communicating on two levels at once: the literal and the deeper level of desire. If a writer doesn’t offer that, put that book down and find someone who can do it for you. Also, become an active listener in real life for the same things. Develop your ear for it. (I will offer some examples below, of course.)

In theater, this emotional subtext is sometimes called a character’s “through-line”. It’s what they really want. Often some words as smple as, “Mom, can I have some money to go to the mall? Timmy and Squibbs are getting ice-cream there…” is really saying: I’m afraid my friends will strengthen their social circle without me.

So when mom says, “No, we have ice-cream in the freezer, Dottie,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise when, next, little eleven year old Dot gives a squeal entirely non-apropos to the context and whinnies, “Moooomm, you never let me do anything!!”

Most of the time what someone is actually saying when they are talking to another human is: give me social status. Or: this is the hierarchy of power in our relationship. Or they’re grasping for some sense of control. (Not being in control is humiliating, but we’re forced into social situations which challenge our fear of shame all the time). The degree to which a character speaks their truth about the subtext of their desire, all while trying to cloak it in politesse, is the degree to which they sound real.

Our ultimate human desire to have agency over the roller-coaster of our lives is surely expressed by a writer in numerous ways. It can be elicited by the narrator, if they are the voice of the story. It may be unconsciously expressed by the author themselves. (Writer, know theyself). And of course each of your characters must also have their own voice and quest for agency.

DIFFERENT FOLKS, DIFFERENT STROKES

Third, differentiate your voices. Think about it: have you really ever heard two people on earth talk the same? Each one of us grew up in a different household, in a different part of town, with different DNA, with different tastes and influences. All of that must be embedded in the words we choose for our characters, the way we decide to have them say things, the actions they take, and the hopes embedded in how and when they decide to speak.

When you arrive at a hotel and there is a problem with your room key, a Brit is going to say they will “get you sorted,” an American will “get you set-up” and an American from California might say they will “get it fixed for you.” An Australian might say, “no worries,” whereas someone born in China and now living in the West might say, “It’s a pity. One moment, please.”

So when your characters are speaking, always remember where they’re from. Even keep a list of different idioms that you come across so that you can capture the timbre and cadence of each specific person in your story just right.

(I have a file of British ways to talk, for example, and it includes phrases like: “you’re a bit of a boffin after you get your kip in, so if you’re knackered ‘cause you’re comin in off the piss, well, don’t be daft, go on then.”) On the other hand, use, such colloquialisms sparingly. You don’t want to be a total nonce.

DIALOGUE WORKS BETTER THAN DESCRIPTION

As you probably know, being a writer who isn’t totally “offer their rocker” but is “minted” and not a bit “wonky”, dialogue is a great way to advance the plot and characterize people at the same time. It’s also less less boring than a big block of text. It lets readers make up their own mind about who is right or who is wrong in a situation. Therefore, if you can write good dialogue, you can write a good story.

(In fact, while you might not want to become a playwright, try writing a play once in your life as writer just to get some practice at the all gas no brakes style of a story that’s based soley on dialogue).

CONFLICT

4. What this achieves is (tip number four): it creates the possibility of conflict. After all, conflict is the lifeblood of a story. It gets the reader’s pulse racing.

Dialogue is inherently exciting to read or hear because there is always some kind of small but real conflict going on when people talk. Conflict is what makes stories interesting. When reading a story, we always want to know who is going to get hurt when there is a clash of minds and desires. We want to align with the winner, after all, because to lose is to fail to survive.

So, when reading or writing, and indeed in the greater social world of our lives, we should always be looking to understand this basic question: Who wants what? What do their words tell you about what they really desire or hope for? How is their desire going to affect someone else who also wants things? How is the conflict going to come up and how is it going to resolved?

Who will insist they deserve to get what they want even if it hurts someone? Are they right or wrong about it? Is power abuse merely the way of the world, or is there a better more human way? Who enforces the social norms and outcomes? Who will nearly die inside and then survive and learn? Who will fail and then plunge into depression or maybe death? Who will go along with others because they want to get by? Who will ask for pity, who will ask for a friend, who will volunteer to give up their own desires to help another? All of that is conflict, really, and we always want to know how it turns out.

In fact, conflict is why we humans love to read and tell stories at all. We want to find out how to avoid such pain ourselves or learn something from tales of misfortune or triumph.

Dialogue in stories without a doubt dramatizes conflicts better than almost any technique in storytelling. Therefore, if you are a reader… you need to learn to appreciate dialogue. And if you are a writer or a person who socializes with others, you need to learn to understand dialogue as a weapon of want and weal or woe.

Why? It is because dialogue always involves power (one person may be flexing their power on another, or someone wants more power), morality, characterization, class issues, layers of truth (maybe a surface of polite fictions that hides a shark below the waters), and wit… all the delicious food for thought that face to face human interaction entails (and literature provides).

For example:

Student: This book is borrrning.

Professor: What? It’s my favorite--

Student: Totally borrr…(The teacher glares at the student). Um, ok. Poor at the rhetorical arts. Totally.

Professor: In fact, it’s yourrrrr own fault. (Mocks the tone of the student).

Student: (blinks, doesn’t want to answer. Internally, they are debating how much shame they have been forced to confront, and weighing the odds of success or consequence).

Professor: Maybe you just don’t get it. Can’t understand, gave up. Didn’t try to read it. Like always.

Student: I had a stomach ache.

Professor: Yeah?

Student: But I did read… some.

Professor: Prove it. Who said: “To thine own self be true?”

Student: Umm…

Professor: Yeah… Umm. Hurr durr.

Student: MacBeth?

Professor: Bzzzzz. It’s Hamlet! Maybe, maybe you should be true to yourself, too… and read the book first before you dog on it! Don’t cheat yourself. You could even learn something…if you’d just get off your phone and do some work.

Now, in the above example, the obvious conflict is that the student didn’t read their assigned reading but was complaining about it anyway because their deflection helps them maintain their sense of self as a victim who’s confronting the unfair system of schooling which has made their existence one of suffering. So there’s the first conflict: Man versus system. But also an internal one: Lie vs truth. (People will always choose the soothing lie rather than the humiliating truth. In this case, the truth is— school is a benevolent boon to every student on earth, an expression of generous largesse bestowed upon kids by loving adults. I know that for a fact because I’m a teacher myself, ha ha).

So, the second conflict is an internal conflict in the mind and heart of the student. They had to decide if they would continue to lie or lose face by admitting the truth. Third, obviously there is an external direct conflict of student vs the teacher. The teacher has their own desires as well, one of which is to affirm their own leadership, intelligence, and acumen to the rest of the willing class. And they may have a desire to show that the student was wrong because they need to maintain their own personal narrative that the world needs them, that the earth is teeming with uneducated dolts who, if they’d only listen to the earnest and kind teacher, they could usher in the utopia of education that could solve all of Earth’s problems. (People always seem themselves as the hero in their personal narrative). After all, do you really expect the teacher to agree that they are a loser, an ineffective instructor, and that the world is careening out of control faster than they can fix it due to the electronic poison of modern telecommunications devices?

With all that conflict, someone was going to get hurt. Either the student was going to be embarrassed in front of their peers or the teacher was going to lose the respect of the other students for mocking a kid (even if the teacher was right). Or maybe the teacher would question their career choice and wonder why they were trying to teach Shakespeare to a bunch of kids who didn’t care to learn a damn thing.

But, if the teacher didn’t force their “agenda”, then they wouldn’t have been doing their job as a teacher (and might lose their job) since teachers are supposed to push kids a little to motivate them. And they damn sure won’t get fired over the fact the student is a ne’r-do-well.

WHAT’S AT STAKE IN YOUR DIALOGUE?

So, in the above scene, there were numerous conflicts and a complex number of outcomes, some better some worse, for a reader to predict and judge. A lot was at stake for both characters. There were all kinds of conflicts or issues each character had to “negotiate” in that little bit of dialogue.

Was there a moral aspect to the interaction? Did the conversation allow the reader to decide who was right or wrong? Was the teacher right to embarrass the student? Was their tone too mean even if they were right? (Could it be both?)

In addition, was the reader free to take a side and make up their own mind about things rather than being “told” what to think by some text? Moreover, did either speaker ever actually say directly what they wanted or thought? Or was it a dance of competing desires that were sublimated below a surface of feints and evasions?

(After all, the student in you probably took the student’s side automatically because kids sympathize with other kids who have to do awful things like read Shakespeare. But maybe the writer in you said, “well, hey, everyone knows that quote. It’s the Bard of Avon after all, and he’s got his Avon products to sell).

Or, did you disdain the lazy student who doesn’t have the taste and sense to dig some of the best literature of all time? It might depend on: are you a parent yet yourself?

We can ask: Was the teacher witty by making a “gameshow buzz” sound, or repeating the long “rrrrrr” sound of the student in order to mock them? Did they seem cool to the other kids by using the slang words “to dog on it”? Or were they just trying too hard to be hip? Was there an imbalance of power between the two characters? If there was, was it acceptable? Did we learn more about each one of them in terms of characterization? And should you now subscribe to Extablisment’s Substack?

Obviously, the answer is yes to all of those questions.

Such is the power of dialogue to tell a story that intrigues a reader. It’s efficient storytelling in terms of characterization as well as offering some fireworks. After all, a good writer might be poetic in describing things, but we animals want meat.

Also, did you notice that the idiom “to thine own self be true” was in there too? And did you see that the teacher used that quote with wit both as an example to prove the student didn’t read the text as well as to give a moral that they could impress on the kid about being a good student? Wasn’t that truly worthwhile? That’s wit-- one set of words serves two purposes.

Lastly, did you notice that neither of them spoke in complete sentences very often?

We’ll reiterate our TIP NUMBER ONE again now.

Unfortunately, the worst stories have people talking like an essay would be written. For example, in a “space ship drama”, someone might say: “Sir, as your chief defense officer I regret to inform you that the enemy is approaching from the left side of the ship and we are vulnerable due to the fact that our shields are down.”

Bleh. That’s not how people really talk. Instead, they’d say: “Enemy, left flank. Shields down. It’s-- um, we’re going to die. Now.”

But the captain says nothing. He only arches an eyebrow.

“Uh, we’re going to die…Sir.”

(In fact, the captain need not say anything to communicate that he wants to be addressed with respect. Sometimes body language is the way people communicate, a few silences or gestures instead of a reply can also tell a story).

Sure, there may be times when people have to speak more formally, and we all shape our words for the audience and context. But in terms of day to day speech, most people talk in short bursts. If you are writing dialogue, it’s good to first write out the words you want the person to say and then go back and trim them. Cut them in half or less if you can. It will sound more real.

Instead of “I think you should watch this video of a boy eating a ghost pepper and throwing up,” a real person would say, “Check this. Guy eats a pepper. Freakin ghost pepper! Throws up…”

Or, how about this: “Check it out-- This guy, ghost pepper!” She nodded at the video screen and made put her hands to her throat like she was gagging, bugging her eyes out.

That’s all you need, and then you can let a description of body language tell the rest of the tale.

CREATIVITY: DON’T BORE YOUR READER

Tip Numero Cinco: Use Dialogue Description Creatively, and avoid over-description.

Often, it’s good to let the words themselves do the talking. If you over-explain things too much when describing how people talk, it gets tiresome for the reader.

Examples: “I’m innocent!” he exclaimed.

“Are you really human?” he inquired.

“I’m unhappy,” she opined.

“You’re a dead man,” he roared.

Notice that “Exclaimed” is already implied by the exclamation mark; the same goes for “inquired” by the question mark; opined is a little over-articulate and distracting; roared is near impossible to believe.

So, if you are adding extra description about the way someone is talking, do it sparingly and have some good reason to do it.

“Stop it,” she hissed under her breath so the teacher wouldn’t catch them glancing at their phones in class again.

The hiss helps characterize someone as “snake-like” and can help the reader infer what the person is really like-- it’s urgent and they have the right to dictate others’ actions. So, there is a dramatic purpose for the extra information.

Often it’s a good idea to describe what the person is doing while they are talking.

“Um, I’m not so sure.” She bit her pencil eraser.

Now, there are no “connective words” that logically link the person’s action to their words. But the reader infers that it is her nervousness about being unsure that is leading her to perform the action of biting her eraser compulsively.

Also, go ahead and every once and a while offer a colorful description using a metaphor or a simile if it helps characterize.

“Bwah ha ha,” she brayed like a donkey.

Here, the narrator has a point of view and is passing a moral judgment on the cartoon-like character they are describing. This may help the story’s conflict or contrast the more polite and good main character with the flawed person who sounds like a coarse animal.

BE CLEVER, THE SAME WAY PEOPLE IN LIFE WANT TO BE

Six: Use Idioms to Sound Realistic and Clever: People also talk in idioms and echo quotes from their influences (allusions), shared culture, and meme-like jokes, etc.

Example: She almost fell down the stairs on her way to the lunchroom.

“Hello darkness my old friend,” Tom grinned.

Indeed, often dialogue is “meta” and contains the content or basic idea that someone is communicating as well as making some commentary on that content such as sarcasm or exaggeration. And they often use common cultural references as social currency.

“Helloooo daaaaarkness!” means they don’t even think it is really that dark since they over-exaggerated the use of the idiom. And if they’re a Gen-X teacher, they may say it like the song “hello Dolly”, even if people younger than them won’t get the joke and people older than them won’t paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel in such an ironic memey way.

The context of singing part of a song by Simon and Garfunkel to a group of other Gen X or Millenials also says: “See, we all appreciate this, we’ve all heard this before, we are an in-group, we have the shared frame of reference. We find the same things amusing, even stupid things.” Voila— social cachet. (It won’t work on Gen Z, though, because they won’t even know Paul Simon from their elbow in a SNL skit. You’re better off quoting Mr. Beast or saying “six seven” to them).

Still, when we over-exaggerate a small thing like, “Oh, it’s our friend darkness, because life is such a struggle,” it’s an idiom both true and silly. Plus, it really communicates something more: a need that says “I want us to share a common thing. I want you to pity my hard life, but in a humorous way because I can’t really admit how deeply sad I am.”

So… good dialogue and idiom-use allows characters to have complex “context” and “connotation” when they speak. This characterizes them and also creates conflicts between what is hoped and what is true. It also allows for wit, multiple meanings and forces the reader to make moral judgements. Viola: writing that lives and breathes.

TIP NUMBER THREE, REDUX More on Desire.

Again, good dialogue signals to readers that you’re an expert on human nature and someone worth reading. You are communicating that you know that people Are Always Really Communicating What They Want No Matter What They Say.

If a student says, “Good Morning, Mr Kevin,” when I walk by, maybe that is just being polite, right? But… the student wants to be perceived as polite. Their sweetness reveals that they hope to be loved or appreciated, that they want acknowledgement as a good polite person and good student in a world of cold homo-sapiens.

Also, maybe it is human habit to greet someone to make sure they are not a threat. That’s why we greet others, actually. We show our hands to indicate no weapon is in them. Greetings really say: “I’m friendly, don’t be afraid”. Well, again, the person wants to be known as friendly.

Survival is always on people’s minds. In the example of the Spaceship captain example above, what is really on the mind of the defense officer? Survival, not dying!

No matter what their words say, everyone wants something. It is the “subtext” of good dialogue that lets a reader figure that out and then be delighted that they can infer what is really going on.

This conflation of desire for the social pacification of others via politesse with the need to really get what we want in life (without seeming craven) leads to a lot of:

7. USE NONSEQUITURS

Here’s an example:

Bill: (walks in the door and sighs, tossing his briefcase to the ground, saying nothing. He lets

the sigh communicate the fact that he is weary. He nods his head at Susan).

Susan: You’re late.

Bill: (Just looks at Susan. Then after a beat says) What’s for dinner?

Susan: Train this time? Or… drinks with the secretary?

Bill: So, that means lasagna?

Notice that neither of them spoke directly to the other. Instead, they both insisted on what they wanted instead of responding to the want of the other person.

People talk in ways that reflect their wants or agenda. Bill refuses to answer and asks about dinner instead of responding to the question. It’s both because he’s hungry but also because he wants to skip any direct conflict with Susan. Susan, on the other hand, wants to start a fight and accuse Bill of sleeping with his secretary. Neither actually really responds directly to what the other said, right? Instead, their responses to each other communicate what they want.

So, that’s tip number Seven: in Good Dialogue, People Often Shouldn’t Directly Respond To What Was Said to Them

Notice that each person in the above example (because of their wants or desires) does not actually ever reply directly to what the other person says. That’s often how people really talk in real life. They pretend they didn’t hear the other person and just go on pushing their “agenda” in a way that is an indirect reply. That is, people’s replies are sometimes a kind of communication which is both a response to what the person said but is also really more about them trying to steer a conversation to their wants.

What people generally want is to have some power or respect in any situation they are in. No one wants to feel powerless or disrespected because it denies them the feeling they are worthwhile. Everyone wants to maintain their own “integrity” and self-respect. Maybe they want sympathy, maybe they want kindness, maybe they want respect. Without those things they’d feel useless or they’d feel like dying because why live in a world that won’t allow you any value?

Tweedle-Dee: You want pizza tonight?

Tweedle-Dum: You always want pizza.

Dee: Who doesn’t like pizza?

Dum: Why don’t you ever listen?

Dee:

Dum: Alright, pizza’s fine.

Here, Dum obviously feels powerless. He isn’t getting what he wants (the power to choose what to eat). But there’s also something deeper than that. Maybe he is resentful because he thinks it is a pattern that Dee has more power than him. Dum is not getting respect. He feels he has lost some of his own self-respect as well for not standing up for himself, too. Ouch!

Now, we could ask: why doesn’t Dum just say “No. I want sushi instead.” That would be a direct response to the first question by Dee. It would be a mature response. But there is clearly something more emotionally important to him: proving that his brother’s past actions have hurt him. He won’t say it, but it’s clear to an astute reader who can infer it or “read between the lines”.

In fact, Dum decides to let his brother have his way in the end. Why? Maybe it’s so he can keep the power of his indignity. If he did get what he wanted, the sushi, then he would win the battle but lose the war that is the brotherly competition which he clearly feels is at the heart of their relationship.

Meanwhile, Dee, if he knows how his brother feels, could have said at the start, “What do you want to eat tonight?” But he really wants pizza; perhaps he also likes the fact that he indeed does get what he wants over his brother more often than not. When accused of not listening he doesn’t deny it. So he uses a fallacy (or flaw in logic or rhetoric). He appeals to “the crowd” and basically says (in the form of a question) that, since everyone likes pizza, Dum should clearly want pizza at that moment. Bottom line, Dee wants pizza and he’ll shame his brother (put him outside the majority of people) to get it.

So… If you want realistic dialogue, try having your characters “talk past” each other, like ships passing each other in the night. If they do respond to each other, make sure that there is something they say on the surface but also some extra connotation that they are implying below the surface. It’s not easy to do, and may take some practice, but that’s ok-- you’re a student. Keep reading and practicing and you’ll get there.

Tip #3 - Part two: Use Slang and Other Voices to Create Unique and Memorable Characters

When the teacher in the first example says that the student was “dogging on” the Shakespeare, they sound real. Each character in a story will choose language appropriate to their wants and desires and purpose and the environment they’ve grown up in. They’ll also choose their words based on who they think their audience is.

When the teacher wants to model a good educated way to talk in order to teach students that style of discourse, they may force themselves to speak in complete sentences. Other times, they may use some slang to remind the kids that they are human, that they are maybe cooler than the kids think, and that they have a sense of humor and are trying to make the class an interesting place to learn. They want respect. One little bit of dialogue can reveal a lot if you think about it.

CAPTURE EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTERS

8. Throw in a ‘Gusher’

People often start out polite or hesitant, then their words gush out when they finally figure out what they want to say. It often takes humans a moment for their brains to realize what they feel and think, then they finally catch up and find the words for it. Here’s an example of a girl talking to a boy about going to a dance:

“Hi, Tom. I want… I wanted to ask you-- do you want to… the dance is tomorrow. Are you going? Should we… Maybe we can go together?”

“Uh, sure… I just… well, it’s…I guess I can.”

“I’m happy to hear, happy to hear you say that.” She adjusted her bookbag strap.

Tom met her eyes instead. “Um. Ok. Actually, wait. The truth is, Sally… I don’t want to go to the dance. I mean, I’ll go. But…not with you. Because honestly-- that time you dumped lasagna on me. Then you, you called me…names. Crybaby, you said. I’ll never forget it. That’s the meanest. No one ever said that before. It was mean.”

At first Tom wants to be known as kind and approachable. He agrees. Then, his mind catches up with how he feels and he realizes something… it all pours out and he stops stammering and tells her directly how he really feels. Good dialogue is able to capture this fact about how humans think and talk.

9. Have a Truth-Teller Who Starts Polite and Then Gives Up and Tells It Like It Is

In the above example, see how the person tries to not hurt Sally’s feelings but then they finally just decide to “go for broke” and tell the truth? This is a great way to write dialogue. People start polite and then, often at one moment, just decide to stop holding back how they really feel.

Here’s an example: one of my favorite movies is the masterpiece called Syriana. It’s about American abuse of power and politics and oil in the Middle East. At one point, a financial advisor (played by Matt Damon) is talking with a powerful Sheik (an Arab prince) about what the Sheik should do. He tries to be polite even though his child has recently died by accident at one of the shiek’s fancy parties. Finally, the Sheik insults him enough to “goad” him. In a torrent of words, the Advisor suddenly bursts out with what he really thinks. (The dialogue below is paraphrased from memory, but the essence is about the gusher).

Sheik: I can give you twenty thousand dollars for your advice.

Advisor: And how much for my other child?

Sheik: So, do you accept the position I’m offering you? You man enough to take my money?

Advisor: Ok, sure.

Sheik: That’s what I thought.

Advisor: Right. You’re in charge.

Sheik: Well, ok.

Advisor: Yeah, but…what do you need a financial advisor for? The truth is, twenty years ago your nation had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you’re tied with Albania. Good job. Your second largest export beyond oil --which is running out-- is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates, which you’re losing five cents a pound on. You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other’s heads off and that’s where you’ll be in another hundred years. So, yes, on behalf of my firm I accept your money.

Now, that scene is the epitome of the ‘gusher’, a moment when people stop being polite and lay their cards out on the table. After all, no one can stand obsequence and humiliation forever. At some point, demanding their dignity becomes a nearly life-and-death situation, where we’d rather die than face more shameful pantomimes.

ALMOST NEVER HAVE A CHARACTER STATE THEIR FEELINGS DIRECTLY

10. On the other hand, obsequience is normally the rule. Most of the time (unless they gush) people never confess their feelings directly. Never have a character say, “Let me tell you how I feel. I just have to confess that…” That would be too vulnerable and also sounds like a writer who wants to make their character confess something. No one ever says, “I’ve decided to just be honest,” like they were writing an essay. People don’t tell you what they are going to say, they just say it. At most, they may say, “Um, honestly…”

Instead, most of the time they dance around what they feel while hoping to not have to say it. We are all taught to be polite and hide our true feelings, especially when that might hurt someone or rob us of the social advantage of not revealing our wants. To say things directly is to risk rejection or shame for wanting something. Most people either can’t face their own feelings or they don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings.

That’s just the way people talk, and that is the way your characters should talk too.

11. Play with verb tense and storytelling. People often start telling a story about something that happened in the past and then change up and start talking about it as if it were happening right then and there. Example: “So I was in the mall yesterday. So I see Mr. Kevin there and he’s buying a taco! Beef! And I’m all, Mr Kevin, I thought you didn’t eat meat?! He’s giving me a funny look. Ok, so, now I’m getting an A in his class. But I gotta keep quiet about it. Don’t tell anyone. I’m only telling you. And Tom. And Ralph. And Jessica. But that’s it.“

12. Play With Accents and Strange Ways of Talking

Again, a character shouldn’t sound like an essay. In real life people talk funny. They use abbreviations, shorten words, and have accents. People from Beijing have that hard “arrrr” at the end of their word pronunciation, right? They become real people when they have a little bit of a regional marker in their speech.

Now, too much accent in dialogue makes it too hard to read or sounds corny. A little goes a long way. Here’s a mangled example of a French person speaking English. The spelling is phonetic: “Ze body was found in ze woods zis morning. ’Ow did zat ’appen? Ze area was checked only yesterday. Sumsing iz wrong ’ere.”

That’s too much. It’s hard to read and it makes the character sound like a cartoon. If you want to mock the French, I guess you could do it, but it might get tiring. A little goes a long way

Still, if you want interesting, unique characters, have them say a few things a little differently than the educated “white” talk of most schoolbooks.

Example: “Yer gonna have a problem there, fella.” You can learn a lot about a character through little bits of accent here and there in your dialogue, so have at least one person in your story have a little bit of an accent if you can. It might suggest something about their economic status, their place of birth, their environment, or the fact that they don’t care if they sound a little different. Again, the way they talk will reveal who they are and what they really want.

If you write dialogue and give a bit of an accent to people, your readers will thank you because they will learn more about the characters that way.

So, now… armed with these tips, go forth and write something with zing, with zip, with wit, with music! Offer the world something that will give readers an experience they’ll never forget. Because, if you don’t, it’s just more forgettable verbiage that will get tossed into the ever-expanding rubbish-dump of human expression.

You know… just like my Substack writing!!

NO MATTER WHAT… IT’S STORYTELLING, SO IGNORE MY ADICE AND DO IT YOUR WAY.

You’ll communicate your unique point of view, perhaps sarcastic perhaps sincere, no matter what. So just go with the flow and get what you got going. What else is there but the fevered moment of creation? Nothing else matters. Certainly, that’s true since you’ll never make money as a writer either, just like me. So enjoy the journey because you’re not going to reach the destination of fame and forture you imagine in this lifetime unless you’re the most lucky tenth of a tenth of a percent of writers in the world.

But if you DO make it to the top like George Sanders or Sanderson, be sure to cite me Mr. Salveson as an inspiration and eternal font of wisdom that helped you be the writer you are today, because I need all the help I can get trying to pay my mortgage! Thanks, and best of luck going forward.

—

You know the drill-bit… subscribe, tell all your friends about me, and send me trinkets of affection in the mail like a cryptocurrency or bullion… just for old times sake! Thanks

It won’t be long before the smoke that lingers above Tehran in the distance turns to silver ghosts in the cold mountain air, disembodied souls shivering in the darkened valley. I know. I’ve seen it for two months now, every night.

City? More like a field of craters now, I guess.

I used to live close by there. In Karaj, near Chamran Park, my home, about an hour away.

We have a big inverted-tulip flower garden in the middle. One of the biggest in the world, I read.

My father owns a car repair shop, Bolboli Auto, on the edge of the park. We service the soldiers that go in and out of Abbasi Carvanserai up the road. I helped paint the Lexus on the sign out front.

Then the war started and Abbasi was maybe a target. Dad packed us up (just me and him) and we drove up Chalus Road past the abandoned Diplomat Restaurant until we could make a camp at Nowjan waterfall. To be safe, he said. To survive.

He doesn’t really like the Supreme Leader much, but we go to the mosque anyway. He for sure hates Tel Aviv and the Americans. Me too.

Now I’m in a tent up in the chilly highs of Alborz, the range that huddles under the Caspian sea like a string of camel humps. There’s no snow now, but at night it’s freezing. I just play with my legos all day when it’s warmer, unless I take a walk in the canyon where the river runs. I tell dad I’m going to read a book, but I just walk and explore.

Dad (Firuz Amiri; I’m Paddi) says we can’t go home until the war’s over. I hear the scream of jets overhead a lot ripping through the air, and sometimes there’s explosion echoes from faraway.

That startles the greasy black kolagh (crows) which I see haunt the grove of trees fed by the trickling stream.

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Firuz divorced mom because “he wished to do so” five years ago when I was twelve, thinking he would marry again. Regimes rise and fall, he joked. Jat khali, I say.

I guess he had an eye for that woman named Lezat (he called her azizam more than once) who sometimes dropped in the shop and left us saffron rice with pomegranate to eat. (Then she moved to Tehran without telling him, wine into vinegar). I miss her now a little, because all we eat is polo ba. At least the potatoes and the rice crust up until they are golden on the bottom of the pan.

Today while I was sitting by the waterfall, one of those old crows alighted on the stone near me and hopped over. He had a pomegranate seed in his mouth, but he dropped it like a gift. Ten minutes later, he was back with two more. I don’t know where he got them. Maybe I can use them in the rice tonight.

In return, I called him azizam just for fun. I gave him some salted pumpkin seeds that I had in my pocket. It was fun to see him peck them up with his proud sharp beak.

Now, as the sun sets, I’m waiting for him to return once more, ishâllâ.

I wonder if I can negotiate with him for something more. After all, mutually beneficial trade is always the reason for a new friendship to begin, isn’t it?

Consider that your story’s voice, its narrator, knows or doesn’t know things (called narrative distance) and they are the funnel which filters all the information that you, as a worthwhile writer, will represent to the reader.

One may ask: how can I decide what details to include, what to exclude? Should I mention the scar on a man’s upper-lip? Or just choose to reveal that his voice sounds like a boat engine idling in a harbor? How to choose?

Your narrator knows because they have something unique to say, something begging to be dramatized.

There’s got to be a near-urgent reason why the story is being told, and it affirms your authoritative take on the world, a unique inspiration or insight which you seek to illuminate. If you don’t have that, you’ll get bogged down and lose the ‘through-line’ of the story. The reader on your fishing line will wriggle loose and become just another prospect that got away.

It’s what I call the “crossing the room” problem. How many footfalls are you going to describe? Example: He wants the drink. He sees the drink on the classroom desk. He decides to drink it. His prefrontal cortex can picture the bottle in his hand. To achive his purpose, he puts his left foot forward five inches. Then his right. He does this motion five more times. He’s halfway there, to the table where the water bottle sits sweating. His left knee bends while his right leg holds the body’s weight. As that happens, he exhales. The air rushes out his mouth before his lungs inflate again.

And so on. How much useless information could you pack into a description of a mundane episode? Too much.

Meanwhile, a different voice might just say; Look at this— this thirsty teacher is going die without water. He does a samba to the Stanley across the room, gulps the gushing liquid down with gusto. Survival secured. Once again he will not perish.

Maybe the exaggerated drama of the second version is all in the head of the teacher, a nebbish like me who sees himself as a heroic figure. That’s narrative distance— the words and approach to the events described are influenced by how much the narrator knows, how much they inhabit the mind of their subject, and the tropes they choose to dramatize.

After all, we all face the same issues: how can we writers grip an audience from the start? What approach will help us navigate a thorny topic? What is going to spark the reader’s interest and imagination? What is our attitude and tone towards the subjects we illuminate with our singular vision? What emotions will hook the reader?

It begins with an interesting voice.

Naturally, the choice of a voice includes choosing the “tropes” we will seek to dramatize. A trope is a common plot or character in a story. Here’s one: the evil guy is really a good guy! (How many times have you read that supposedly surprising reveal?) That might not be a surprising idea for a reader to encounter, but you can invigorate it with a different approach or an interesting voice telling a ripping yarn from a certain distance.

Certainly, most stories have been told before. If you go to tvtrope.com you will find that every single last idea that you can imagine has already been done to death by the hacks who scribbled out another crappy episode of Mannix in between coke binges.

Damn, it’s hard to come up with something fresh when you are a writer out here. Maybe it has to flow from your unique perspective and a spark of inspiration (emotion recollected or muse-driven, as poet Wordsworth might say.) In other words, show the world what your true perspective is when you’re burning to find some truth which lights you with Promethean fire. What approach informs you which no one else but you might be able to capture?

When we read stories, we want unique and creative ways of seeing the same old things. People have seen thousands of movies and TV shows and read hundreds of books by the time they’re a teenager. So, it’s not easy avoiding cliché and stereotypes. “Love is exciting” is a boring insight, to be sure. We already know that. But if a writer says, “I am a heart, I pump blood. When my owner sees that girl, I go into overdrive. All my friends (the blood cells) pass by like they’re on a rollercoaster waving at me and I am their mom buying the E-tickets for their wild ride!” That’s interesting-- now we are seeing love from a new point of view. It makes it come alive in our imagination. That’s the power of an interesting trope.

A good writer offers their reader a new spin on old ideas. We want to enter a world that the author has conjured for us like a magician or a virtual reality AI. That can be done through the “trope” approach, which just means telling a moment in a story from a unique point of view using an out of the ordinary approach, or using a common plot twist or character type in a fresh way.

An interesting trope choice can help the author organize ideas or insights into a dramatic scene. For example, at the start of Liu CiXin’s: Three Body Problem,” we are given a god-like narrator. This all-knowing narrator follows an ant crawling over the top of a gravestone. The trope is: find a little person to lead us to a bigger idea. Or: no matter our ambitions, we’re all just tracing a path while death looms below us.

That’s a narrative concept that allows CiXin to dramatically organize the details he is telling the reader about. (In this case, it was the grave of the parent of one of the main characters. Her pain at her father’s untimely death will eventually inspire her to help aliens to attack Earth). It’s a great way to begin because it reminds us that --in the scope of the vast universe-- even we humans are like little ants, too. Liu is both telling the story’s events as well as suggesting deeper meaning because of the choice of narrator and the trope of little character caught in impossible circumstances.

What if there was a paragraph of all questions? What if it was telling a story about a painter’s first show? What if it was an art gallery down a Shanghai alley? Can you imagine the protagonist’s painting on the wall? Do you think that the people walking by would each be talking or quietly revealing their true selves while they looked at the painting, casually dismissing the anguish pressed into each brushstroke? What if there was one girl who picked at the skin on her thumb nervously while she gazed at the painting? Did that artwork seem to look back at her and did it see the hurt in her eyes? What if she was the daughter of the painter? What if the artist was now in the hospital? What if she wanted to steal the painting and sell it to fund her father’s medical care? What if?

Here’s another trope: Tell a story in second person. For example: So, you hide out in the bathroom. You don’t want to look in the mirror there. Finally you take a peek, a sideways glance. Sure enough, you see the bruise is spreading like a red and green blotch of gangrene on your cheek. You know now the burn of regret going on a date with that girl. You knew she had a temper. You snort. Will you ever learn?

See-- a novel approach to storytelling sparks people’s imaginations. They’ve read stories before, but maybe they’ve never read your story before. It could be one told from the point of view of a tomato that grows from seed to plant. It stretches its arms in the wind and sun on the farm for weeks until one day it is plucked and thrown into a bin. Trucked into the city, it finds the air dirty and the sounds frightening. Finally, it’s dumped on a home with a nice family who puts it in the refrigerator to stay crisp. What a nice life… Until that day when it sees its owner come at it with a knife!

Or, how about this: “I know what they’re going to say. It’s what they always say. They will see me and offer me a drink. Then they will kick at the dirt while I try to light the barbecue. They won’t make direct eye contact. They won’t ask why I didn’t bring a date to the party. They’ll pretend their attention is focused on fiddling with the knob that adjusts the gas flow to the flame. They won’t dare wonder why I didn’t bring my girlfriend this time. They will ask about college and how my classes are going, but they won’t ask about my grades because they know there’s a good chance my grades are bad. They’ll pretend everything is all right. And then I will hear them crying in the bathroom on the phone to their friend later that day, wailing about how I’ll never get married and move out of the house. Or at least, that’s how I’m expecting it will go. It never fails.”

In this example, there is a conflict between talking about a real topic (the person’s lack of success in life; the person’s lack of a romantic partner; their fear of the truth; their resentment that others aren’t honest either) and the family’s attempt to be polite. There is also a potential conflict between what the narrator thinks will happen vs what might actually happen later on. Expectation vs reality, an internal conflict. After all, thinking you know what ‘they’ are going to say reveals a lot about the narrator. Maybe this person is wrong. Who knows for sure? There is tension between their smug assumptions and a perhaps more complex reality. All of this tension is achieved with the trope technique of using future verb tense and having a plural subject (they), all conjured by someone who is just guessing. That’s a deliberate choice by the author to characterize a narrator with an interesting voice. Once that trope is used, the whole story’s wheels are set in motion.

Here’s another example: Morning. Bathroom. Glass of water. Gargle. Spit. Sigh. Back to the bedroom. See: the sun. A sliver of sun. It peeks through the curtains. See it stab onto the floor and slice at the hardwood. Sit on the bed. Fight the urge to crawl back under the covers. Pick up the pen. Stare at the blank page. See the sliver of sun carve south towards the empty breakfast table. See it slide across the tabletop, dazzle the glass, tickle the silverware, move on. Slowly, in inches and minutes and hours, watch the line of light sweep across the floor. Watch it ignite the dust motes in the air for a moment as it crosses the room, then: hit the wall on the other side of the table. Crawl up the bookshelf. Light, books, a moment’s golden glow. Slowly it inches towards retreat at the window. It buries itself in the darkening tree branches outside the window. Sunset. Finally: night. Close the notebook with nothing new written in it. Dinner. Bathroom. Bed. Another day: wasted. Wasted.

This voice does several things: it often talks in one word statements that capture actions or descriptions in brief bursts. They are bald statements of fact which remind the reader that this frustrated writer has to face the sad truth all day long-- they’re unsuccessful. It measures out time slowly and deliberately. It also follows light as it moves across the room, giving us a sense of progress over a day. A rhythm is achieved.

It does all of that in present tense in a way that “orders” the reader to do things. Sit here, it says, like a person would command you to do. You are told to watch, to see. It’s almost second person since the “you will watch” is implied. The reader has become the main character and the narrator is ordering us around. Also, the light is “personified.” There are action verbs that tell us the light slices, slides, dazzles, tickles, sweeps, ignites, crawls, inches and buries itself. It’s all done to bring to life the frustration of the writer facing writer’s block. The light is the only thing living in the room; the main character (you) is just a passive witness. That’s the power of a trope, voice and approach to make a new point of view come alive.

In this case, the “voice” of the writer is making interesting choices regarding how to tell a story. It also captures a certain drama or conflict-- the longer it goes on the higher the tension ratchets. Each event that goes by without progress is a shame. The repeated word “wasted” is an emotional cap on the event. No one wants to feel such regret, surely. But this writer wastes time; they sigh, they follow the sun across their room as if hypnotized or immobilized by it. The conflict is internal-- will the writer overcome their lethargy or indolence and get some work done, or will they allow their mindless fascination with the shaft of light to distract them? By night, there is a pervasive feeling of failure as another day has irretrievably slipped by.

Clearly, playing with formats, tropes or voices is always a fresh way to approach fiction.

Here’s one more example:

Top ten reasons I can’t finish writing my novel: 1. global warming. 2. Sally. 3. Pen is out of ink. 4. I’ve gotta research what it is like visiting a person in a hospital. Maybe go to a hospital and take notes? 5. Sally. 6. My publisher needs to call me back and send a check, I’m not working without getting paid. 7. Maybe there will be a war between China and India and the whole world will be destroyed, so why bother? 8. Sally. 9. I can’t think of anything for #9. 10. Sally.

Clearly, this “list of reasons a person can’t write” uses the post-modern trope of a Top Ten List. It’s ironic, a story that hints at why a story can’t be finished. The repetition of “Sally” is the real reason they can’t write: it’s heartbreak, obviously. Maybe Sally is injured in the hospital. But that fact is buried by the author among less important facts and what seems like an attempt to get over a broken heart via the composing of a top-ten list.

Bottom line, often it’s good to not settle for the same old story structures and styles. Instead, try and offer the reader a creative insight or fresh point of view. These can come in two basic flavors: a striking and unique way of seeing the world from a fresh perspective, or, second, an out and out nugget of wisdom put in a poetic insightful way.

Example: “I tell you true: Humans love to offer advice to others, advice which they wouldn’t actually ever follow themselves. Offering the best version of who they want to be turns other people into clay for them. They are the sculptor wielding the scalpel, crafting a masterpiece of what should be. At least, that is what my dog told me (or rather, barked at me, but I knew what he meant). I threw him a biscuit and asked for more wisdom.”

This insight into the irony of human nature uses a pottery metaphor to get the idea across. But it’s also “questionable” since it comes from a dog. The trope of a talking dog giving advice is interesting as a concept that allows a man to ruminate on things. Perhaps it’s ironic since it’s not wise to take advice from a four-legged animal; the narrator seems perhaps untrustworthy if he’s interpreting animal barks. Or, maybe the dog’s wisdom is going to be the main inspiration of the story? There are a lot of possibilities in terms of offering an insight about human nature in a fresh and captivating way here.

In the end, a voice can help the reader appreciate that your “writer’s eye” is worthwhile and insightful. After all, people expect an author to have some insight into human nature, an eye for what is missed by the average person. If a writer has no unique insight or point of view, why would they speak up at all? And if they have nothing to offer a reader, soon that reader will put aside the book without a doubt and go online and tweet that the book just did nothing for them.

That’s a career-killer! I’ve seen it happen.

You don’t want to be that author, so use some tropes or a fresh approach to communicate to the reader that you deserve their time and attention.

You know the drill: I could make a living at this sickening, forlorn writing business if you’d just open your wallet and let the stacks of sub get its hooks into you using their Stripe app or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

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Me. I know.

I do a lot of writing that never sees the light of day. That’s one reason I started this Substack… so that, before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I might expunge the accumulated detrius of my life (and hard-drive) into the aether, the overflowing sewers, or wherever else mediocre artwork goes after it is published. (The Remainder bin at the local Barnes and Noble? With any luck.)

So… about a decade ago I got the idea for a novel which would connect the ancient Greek religious rites of The Eleusinian Mysteries with 17th century Italian witch trials and saintly mysticism, all culminating in their historical recurrence via the modern day research chemical experiences of psychonauts like Alexander Shulgin. It’s a tall order, I know.

The idea is: Silphium, the ancient Roman herb (a food seasoning, a form of birth control, and an abortiofacient, if the history books can be believed) was farmed out of existence in the age of Nero. It is probably the source of the world’s use of the “heart symbol” since it was so intertwined with sex and the economy of Cerenacia that it wound up imprinted on their coins.

However, my book will suggest that it was never entirely lost to the sands of time. Naturally, it has magical properties, or at least psychoactive ones. Because: novel.

While some historians postulate that barley ergot was used to induce mystical experiences for the ancients who participated in the Eleusian Mysteries (whch hosted celebrities such as Plato; he said that enduring the mysteries was why he didn’t fear death), my novel hypothosis is that it was Silphium ergot instead that was in the drink at the heart of the ceremonies these ancients celebrated.

No wonder no one quite knows what was in the brew served to hierophants three thousand years ago. It went extinct. So my guess is as good as any.

Since then, I’ve been researching the topic from all kinds of different angles. Learning Italian. Learning Greek. (Ok- faking it). Studying the late Renaissance. Dreaming of Italy. Studying the ancient practices that took place over a span of 2500 years at Eleusis. (No one knows exactly what those were, despite being a religious tradition with more accumulated history than the entirety of Christianity on Earth, because to reveal what went on in those ceremonies was punishable by death).

It will probably take me ten more years to finish and will surely involve living in Italy for at least two or three of those. I’ve got at least 140,000 words already written, but a dozen re-writes will be needed without a doubt.

First I’ve got to figure out how to believably convey the idea that rediscovered Silphium ergot becomes the kykeon of modern times (able to reveal the secrets of quantum tunneling in both time and space, too). It has to appeal to mystics and, soon after, Silicon Valley techbros looking to exploit ancient technologies, too. Plus, I’ve got to make it as commercial as a Dan Brown novel so Paul Verhoven turns it into a movie. So there’s that.

These are the kinds of things that animate my imagination, anyway, when I’m not writing about Prince. Or satirizing SmugStruck and the writing life. Or writing a Molly Mapkins novel. Or writing music. Or teaching. Or putting together investment portfolios. Or publishing urban Los Angeles hip-hop style odysseys. Or jotting down poetry. Or writing a satire of rock and roll. You know, la dolce vita. The sweet life. It keeps a guy busy.

Below, then, find an excerpt from The Silphium Mysteries. Just as a kind of proof of concept. This passage is written in the voice of a noviate in a convent on the site of a hospital in Vercelli, Italy in the 1600s. Enjoy.

Oct 20, 1669

“Sister Mary Augustina, come quick! Lord, have pity! There’s demons…”

Those are the words which truly may have been the beginning of the end. In principio erat Verbum. Like our Scriptures say, in the beginning was the word. But these words were not of creation. I know now they augured the destruction of everything we once knew.

As I write today it has been four months since the dark times fell upon our verdant rice fields and Terra Christiano: Vercelli my love. I pray I live to see the turn of such trials to the sweet face of our Father’s peace again. But I think I shall not.

I confess I am afraid to write such a thing. Yet, I also confess: I have had visions. Our Lord’s wrath and the clouds malvisto of the Stregheria and the Calvinists (which had before visited the Gauls and the Teutons but never us) is now blackening all of the plains of Piedmont! Nuvole nascondevano il sole. The sun blots out like spilled pen ink. Sometimes I see smoke rising in the distance. There is no telling when any conclusion will bless us.

I can still hear her: “Sister! Presto! Sbrigati! Blood is everywhere!” It was Sister Mary Seraphim’s angelic voice. She struggled up the steep back steps of our Priory where the kitchen hunches up against the chapel. I saw her dashing down the hallway behind the chapel’s rectory carrying her robes in a bunch when I peeked out the window of the scullery. A large looming bilious shadow cast by the vesper-time candle-light flickering in the rectory quickly receded back into the size of her black bobbing physico as she approached. She let out a little stream of air from between her lips as she ran, I think like an empty sheep’s bladder being squeezed.

It was the quiver in her “blood” which first carried the portent of doom to me. (Truth be told, I ring like a bell anyway at her every syllable, her every vowel. It’s for good reason that she is our Priory’s head choir mistress. When she sings even the angels in Heaven put aside their harps and cock their heads to hear). Sweet as her voice is, I felt a chill to my very being when I heard it.

If only I had known that the uncontrolled tremors in her cries were a warning that nothing would ever again be the same, telling of the avertimento that it seems cannot be averted. That cry was a whipping wind through my anima.

Are we all now just tattered curtains in the window, enduring the squalling blows of the apocalyptic trumpeter? A whipping raffica like dear St. Jerome’s is finally blowing? I wonder. We wonder.

But who am I? A mere soul, just a mouse named Sophia Venetoso Benetucci. All I am is for the greater glory of our Lord and our Priory. Look at the way I write, I can’t even keep the pen steady. Like a mouse scratching a nest.

Oct 22

I am now able to continue. It is after Vespers and the night is quiet. I have my candle and have finished chores. Finally. Now my practice time, the only thing I truly love.

Many things have changed since last Friday. Yet I remember it so clearly, as if it was made of stained glass in my mind.

I was sweeping the dust from out of the pantry (if that could even ever be done in all the sticky humidity) and I came up short when I heard Mary Seraphim’s words.

They came out of her through a throat so tight I thought she had turned into a bird momentarily. “Sister. There’s blood. Sibyl’s bleeding!” She cried.

Well, so what? I thought. We are used to blood. This is a hospital after all. We are near the foot of the Alps. The wounded tumble out of the valley like dislodged stones in a raging river. Sister Adeline tells us that in the past we’ve been awash in enough bodily humors and fluids to overflow the banks of the Po! (That is many piede and miglio away away in the south mind you). Upon our plains, at the bottom of our valley, submerged in water most of the year, our paddies are oceanico, mirrors to the sky.

We seem to grow two things best: rice and bleeding bodies that fall out off the hillside cliffs like drunken goats onto our soil. We joke it is what makes our soil so rich, our vegetables so delicious.

David, let me tell you, we are the only hospital between Bologna and Milan along the road which the travelling pilgrims once passed on their way to the Holy Land, the via frangiato. Sister Mary Helen Rita says we’ve seen the Romans (those monsters!) march by, we’ve seen the Gauls (those brutes!) march by, we’ve seen the Spaniards (those ugly pigs!) take the land and then lose it, and we’ve seen king repeatedly war with king by boat and bow. She jokes that they think we exist simply to be a stop on their parade route! We’ve watched as a succession of Medici princes battled the Duke of Monteferrat for the crown of Savoy, with us going back and forth like a wine goblet passed at banquet. It is a cup which they could not bring to their mouths without staining their lips crimson!

What that always means to us in Vercelli is— more wounds to heal, more bodies to bury… when we aren’t planting rice. We laugh. No one knows that the hospital’s buckets of spew are really what makes the black rice of Vercelli famous. We make that color out of human suffering.

Yes, blood is our trade. The blood of man, the blood of Christ, blood of the earth. We are not afraid of a little blood.

So I shrugged, but I wanted to see what would happen next. Her horse whinny of fright did set my blood cold in my veins, I admit.

Within mere moments, Sister Augustina appeared from the rectory entrance wearing her black vesper robes of linen with the silk ribbon trim that was Milanese. (You must know that noble city produces more clothes and thieves than any other.)

“What is this shouting? Another patient?” She practically bellowed. Her visage filled the hallway and seemed to block her candle light, so I shrunk back into the corner of the pantry where the mice make their nests. I pushed my broom of bound twigs mindlessly as a reflex to appear busy while I strained my ears to listen to what they said next.

“It’s not a patient, Sister, it’s Sibyl! And she’s bleeding, howling about witchcraft near the water well at the foot of the road to the Sacri Monte!”

But then, of course, everyone always called for Sister Augustina. On their death beds, when it was time to deliver Last Rights, when soldiers came to decamp in the Abbey and leave their wounded behind before staggering on back to Rome, when the axeman cut off his thumb out in the glade and left a trail of droplets all the way back into the village. Yes, whenever there was blood and others losing their heads, she was the one who knew the most about the medicines of our hospital.

More than that, she is the angel of our lives. She is the Abbess, the one who imposes the will of our lord on us heathens, as she often remarks. She is the nun who administers the sacred remedies of the soul, the absolutions. That is her true office.

And, I admit, I have also learned to cry out her name. Indeed, I am told that when I was abandoned and left for dead at the rectory doorstep, she took me in. All I know is that she was a mother to me. She raised me and trained me at the Priory. She has tutored me like no other. She taught me to be a nurse’s aide, after all. I was under her thumb, but it was a safe place in her palm. Now that I am sixteen I am to be a candidate for the sisterhood under her tutelage! (I confess I am little bit afraid about that.)

“So apply a tourniquet and quiet yourself,” I heard Sister Augustina conclude to Seraphim that night. Curtly, as is her style. “You’ve been taught this.”

I tried to remember in my mind how I had been taught the same when I was ten. But I snapped out of my momentary reverie when I heard Seraphim’s next words: “Sister,” Mary Seraphim had tried to whisper, but couldn’t even manage it. “It’s not just blood. She’s gone mad! She cuts herself. Like a witch! It’s stregheria. La Vecchia Religione!”

Well, surely that was also nothing, too. See, here at St. Bicchieri we are also used to madness. Our founding matron once had visions too, and that’s why the church is built where it stands today. This is common knowledge.

David, let, me explain. As part of the hospital and orphanage complex we also host a small school for children with maladies such as Saint Anthony’s Fire and afflictions of the spirit for which there is no cure. Of course, many of them might have seemed frightening, like a looming shadow from a candle that alights and bobs on a wall!

They are good people, the townspeople of Vercelli. They love the Basilica complex and they never stop us from doing God’s work. They know we show mercy on all of God’s creatures. Even those the Lord has afflicted in order to purify their soul through the exquisite suffering which prepares them for heaven.

They just call us witches sometimes, but no one really cares.

In fact, we are the pride of all of Piedmont, renown from Bologna to Venice, from Paris to Rome! Only the Milanese, with their great hospital Lo Spedale di Poveri, can match us in our Christian devotion to Jesus’ demand that we love all and that the first shall be last. Other illicit convents house women of poor birth and indiscretion (we must admit these are rumors, I have not only heard this but seen it). Some of them are merely halfway houses for the devil, I am ashamed to admit that it is whispered.

Our St. Bicchieri had a grander vision, a city of god in the val de Vecel. We are the cupped hands here of her mercy, of the good land where the winter snow melts to pool into spring waters. Healing waters. We all plant our patchworks of manna like fertile fields, though they are beds for the sick. Our hospice is a place to comfort the ill, a place to tend to the smallest of the flock-- orphans and savants as well as the old, feeble, the suffering.

We take all into the bosom of Sister Augustina’s beneficence. This is true, according to the plaques I have read, since it was first imagined hundreds of years ago, when Gall knights and Saxons poured out of the valleys on their way to the holy land, long worms that inched their way along, stopping at each reliquary along the way to refresh their fervor with prayer. Such that these worms were chewing ever so slowly to their salvation through the soil. Sister Augustina says there was a time when we didn’t’ grow rice here, that there was only wheat. Still, our mud has always been the best place to plant food when there isn’t too much flooding.

This is why we are only amused at mentions of madness, talking in tongues, savants. They don’t understand our knowledge of the medical arts (not, though, occult or pagan). They are frightened some because they know not the gifts of god, the lord all the herbs, the cures, the henbane for resting, the verbena for wounds, a compress of cool mint. This makes for a better hospital. Jesus our savior is the light, and by his example we form our candle wax into a beacon that shines with the divine flame only he could have ignited. Creator, redeemer, Savior.

A little madness, a little blood… that is our stock and trade.

And though all we can do is soften the blows and sometimes heal the wounds or more often provide a Christian burial, I can say that it is true our doctors are like deep wells nourished by all of these red waters that flow out of the Alps into our crossroads. From the times of the Holy Crusades, where it was our Shrine which was along the Martyr Road, then war after war, all the time the sailors from Bologna coming east to Milan passing through, and the Biblioteca Marciana in Venizia. All of them, rivulets which underground feed our doctors and nurses’ wells!

We have seen it all. But, of course, accusations of witchcraft in the public square was a matter altogether different.

I’m afraid now for what will be.

As an extra bonus, here’s a video of some Silphium music which I wrote a few years ago. I bet you’ll like it if you enjoy the dream-pop which all the kids are enjoying these days.

Hope you like it! Tell me what you think of it in the comments below.

Also, feel free to subscribe in order to get more installments of this work in progress in the future. The man doesn’t want you to, but when have you ever buckled to the demands of a bully!?

Sure, it may be a fool’s errand to ever devote your time or money to an artist’s meager mission in this day and age, especially when a deluge of content floods the world, but…

Dear pilgrim, if you want to find favor with your God, know he smiles upon such largesse. The boundless heart of the Bodhisattva is in your power to bestow. Plus, it may be tax deductible.

Just prepare yourself: this is going to be one helluva speculative odyssey, and it may test your patience unless you already love the hell out of Thomas Punch-on’s Grabbity’s Reign-Blow. The rest of you might just want to rain-blow this one off.

Oh, you’re still here? Ok. First, you might notice I changed the title of this unwieldy monster. I found out that someone else already tied up the idea of a GR “Companion”. Too bad, because I liked that word. It seemed country-homey and warm, something to temper the otherwise intimidating reputation of the book.

So, what to call this? An “adjunct”? An accompaniment? A glossarium? A Gravity’s S’up-limental? A compliment? An appendage? A concomitant? A dialog? A Dialogesis? (Is that even a word?) Howabout just a “handholder” because you readers certainly need some gland-holding? A spoonfeeder? A Sancho? A sidekick? A disentangler? An Unscrambler? An elucidation? A guidebook? A dissembler? A panglossary? A delineator? An exegesis? (That would make me the exegete). A support group? Maybe counterpart works ok since it implies a somewhat adversarial role, someone who will counter the deification of the author and text while at the same time helping to interpret it or represent it (by way of existing in relation to it). I guess I’ll wind up doing that just because I’m a prickly bastard sometimes.

I dunno, let me think. A Gravity’s Confidantalia? A confrère? A massive missive miscellany? That might work for the missile puns embedded in it. A textplication? A manifestator? That’s ok because it has the root man in there and this is a toxic masculinity mocking book, right?

An encyclical? A De-cipher? A Decoder ring? The book is certainly one big crypto-adventure, it’s true, because the main character has to assemble a series of obscure facts to see if he can piece together a coherent interpretation of what the hell is going on (and the reader does too).

Or even simpler: an accompaniment. Like a companion, but nothing that will get me sued for copyright infringement. The book is the text, I’m merely playing along, keeping readers company.

A Grave-itee Encyclical? I guess that works since one of the ideas of Pynchon’s book is that human nature repeats, bound to cycles of hope and failure, bliss and agony, erection and de-estruction (notice the estrus root in there, so go with it), the same way a rocket’s trajectory is a half-circle of rise (yet determined to fall). It’s something that can’t be escaped, an expression of pi-based calculations which reference a kind of Nietzscheian eternal return. So, you know, his book precipitates my little Superman will-to-power as a dialogue, I guess. See me approach the text, engage the enemy, synthesize a dialectrical main sweet parade.

Howbout a “demystifier”? That’s because, first of all, this book is seemingly so mysterious in many ways. Moreover, it may be a bit mystical. If the mystics are those who subscribe to Romantic ideals or relish religious fervor (which they sense spiritually rather than via their empirical senses to ascertain), then I suppose the Van Braun quote at the start of the book makes some rough-hewn sense.

You know, when people quote the “spirit”, I often find it resonates some in appealing ways. At least I want to believe that there’s more than quotidian, data-driven reductive calculations which make life worthwhile. In terms of the book, we can observe that one thing I’m in tune with his Pynchon’s idea that the military seems to be so regimented, so sure of itself and its righteous violence as the “iron law of history” but is really just a flawed human brutalist project.

Surely this is what our revered author is mocking in GRrrrr. His main character apparently can read people’s spirits or something like that, and the novel’s chief Macgunnin is guy who’s sex life --libido overdrive!-- determines the fate of thousands. It reeks of masculine hormonal necessity. Naturally, such penetration and insemination be questionable, o me Pirate. (Though there’s a mystical streak in the military, too, when they start believing their hype so much that they start labeling what they do a holy war. (Insert link). I wonder if we can drag the word seminary in there as an extra religious pun. It’s a seminal idea, perhaps.

You silly humans, always wanting to mystify, even in endeavors that start with a materialist view! Well, hope is the thing with featherbeds, as they say.

But for the most part, what I appreciate is the mystic Romantic hippie rejection war in the book. After all, I was born in 1968. I’ve been trampling through the big muddy ever since. Some may cling to the security of a regimented order that admits no mystery because the military tends to de-humanize and think of nature as something to dominate rather than work together with, but I don’t. So, if I call this series A Gravity’s Rainbow Demystifier then we’re suggesting that the point is to tease out some insights about the book as we read it, even the confusing or mystifying parts.

So, ok, we’ll go with that, even if I also reject the most irrational aspects of Romanticism because all the woo-woo can make you believe a lot of dumb stuff, and positioning the myopic self as the center pole around which everything Gravitates --(yep) is a bit solipsistic.

Yet I can’t rule out Romanticism either in the era of the database-driven late-capitalist technofeudal dystopia we’re seeing develop right now. The Romans wouldn’t stand for it, surely. So-- Demystifier it is... for now. All of that applies tangentially to how I will approach the book, right?

Fine. Moving on. Let’s actually address the text. I suppose we need to start here: Why Gravity?

To reference that major force of the universe is to right away launch into bewildering spacetimes stretched out to infinity like infernal terminal taffy for me, really. These are unknown realms of understanding that make my head heart dizzy. As Donald Rumsfeld said about the US’s war with Iraq in 2003, there are “known unknowns” and there are “unknown unknowns”. Naturally the latter I will never know (by definition), but spacetime is a known unknown. I know it exists but I understand f*k-all about it.

Still, let me speculate a bit in terms of this book’s title. For amusement’s sake. Because I like to drink sake sometimes.

To begin, I don’t think you can conflate gravity much with electro-magnetism (light radiation --rainbows being the beautiful expression or manifestation-- as a form of that). Can you? However, in terms of unifying the forces, to conflate the fields and forces in order to come up with a theory of everything, those two elemental factors of our physical plane have to be balanced out and disentangled. Right?

So is that the kind of shit that was on Pynchon’s mind when he decided to name his book? Gravity and electro-magnetism (light radiation) as metaphors for human behavior and history? Both expressed in waves or cycles, too. Plus maybe: spirit’s effort to loose the binds that inevitably tie us?

I mean, maybe. We’ll see if we come to some explicit references or suggestions to that end. Honestly, is this book trying to unify the fields as a literary gambit of highfalutin symbolism? To wit: does the indeterminacy of photons (particles, but actually more like waves, and waves are merely expressions of energy in fields and planes, I guess) act as a metaphor for the indeterminacy of meaning in the modern novel or modern life? One wonders. It better be, or this hefty tome has been oversold.

Sure, a rainbow suggests multiple interpretations of light wavelengths (waves of energy being the vibrations that make up everything in this universe, various frequency of energy vibrations, all interacting with the Higgs field or whatever), right? And we know rainbows just separate out and make visible the various frequencies of those embedded radiant photonic vibrations. Metaphor: the many embedded in the one. Let’s go to embedded, baby. It’s quite a come-on. But how does that impact the story or the reading experience?

Perhaps Pynchon intends it as a spiritual dimension beyond the quotidian military industrial way of seeing resources and labor-- it’s the call of man to unite with Godhead. We are merely permutations of the original unified One. (Isn’t there some Kabbalah mysticism in this book too, I gather?) I’m speculating, of course.

And rainbows are beautiful. So if I tease out the ideas of the book --that gravity acts as a metaphor for human cycles in life and history and in our natures due to laws of the conservation of angular momentum based on the subatomic pull of massive objects in our local cluster, then the characters and events of his book are all synecdoche for... wait, I’m losing it.

How can I come to terms with this?

Ok-- let me make a spectacle of my ignorance some more. We’ll try to play this out with the metaphor thrust in the back of our minds while we try to understand the physics in the foreground.

People smarter than me tell me that in fact Gravity isn’t a force like a Newtonian energy that exerts a pull against the laws of motion, it’s a wavy warping of space-time based on...mass, but it is really more of a pull on or a manipulation of time. (That’s according to some baffling Youtube videos I came across, which I can’t fathom even if each part of the explanations they give sounds reasonable... until you realize you don’t understand a thing).

And so, to continue, rainbows and gravity work together because mass comes from elementary particles (Baryons in the Hadron family, nucleons glued together by mesons... so they tell me) which, when you got enough of them all compacted, warps spacetime. Those particles hold together because of strong and weak forces, but they are also electric, or at least carry waves of electricity (electrons get excited, pair and bond-- atomic physics plus chemistry as sex metaphor). And one expression of that electricity is: light. The Rainbow. Which emanates from the mist of suspended molecules held tight do to electrical bonds to form spherical drops of suspended water, floating in an atmosphere of molecules acted on by the earth’s gravity, all bending radiant energy in a process called refraction, such that people on drugs can cry out, “look at the pretty colors!” See- I’m de-Mist-ifying.

Further, the travel through space a rocket makes while being warped by gravity (swimming in its waves) is just like a waterdrop... itself being a variable in the grand play of time dilation (hence the book’s attempt to make sense of recent human history) of our localized troposphere, which one can surmise is also is similar to the varied play that a differentiated or bent radiant electromagnetism field produces for the eyes of humans, perceived as diverse color and waves and spectrums.

Got it! So simple, why a child could understand it.

That certainly explains why this book got considered for the all the pretty prizes before being rejected as fucking obscene! Pynchon has transcended space, time, energy and literature! No wonder they made a movie of this book and let him swim in a lake made of dollar bills. No wonder they gave him the Nobel in Writer-dom for it.

Oh. Wait.

But anyway...So it’s all connected somehow, though scientists today can’t quite get the math to tell a simple narrative of how it all works with some predictable enough equations that really unify the gravity with the other forces, I guess. Too bad, because if we could do it that would allow us to travel like Star Trek across galaxies or go back in time to kill our grandfather clock or whatever.

In terms of the book, and how he mocks human attempts to master the universe, win wars of choice, seed the universe with our seed, or whatever, what can we extrapolate from all this? That Pynchon’s big complaint is that we’re too ambitious and we fuck it all up since we can’t unify the fields?

In other words, the teleology of Western Civilization, that it’s on a path towards ever-greater perfection and progress, led by the United States, is just an illusion, a monstrous hubris. What goes up must come down.

I guess this idea found new form and force in the late 60s since, post-WWII, it was the narrative that a lot of people wanted to be true, especially those Vietnam war hawks who felt it was a White Man’s Burden and their divine right to force all this on natives and liberals.

Just look where it’s got us today.

Is that right? Someone tell me if I’m on the right track. But, ok, to further complicate matters-- excited atoms are merely carriers of electric waves, those stressed and stimulated electrons. Light is just stimulated electric photons. And so is sex a stimulation, I suppose. Hence, the book critiques the military and quotes rocketry to this end, to mock the seeking when it’s all just waves that come and go, cum and magog. Is that his gravity’s rainbow metaphor? Electro-magnetism is a metaphor for the over-weaning sexual urge, and yet all the waves cycle back to earth and fail in the end?

I dunno. I avant garde a clue.

All I know is: a guy’s sex life in the book allows a map of falling rockets to be charted. So if rockets are phallic, and that phallic nature is man’s thrust into the universe to find meaning, and the whole project winds up being a failure (cyclical) the same way gravity warps space time to pull things into circling orbit (planets are always trying to escape, but they can’t due to the conservation of angular momentum), then we can deduce that’s the book’s metaphor for spiritual dysfunction in humans?

Aw fuck it. It’s a book is all it is.

I’m hungry. I should make a banana shake, get a few chuckles from this, and just fudge any deeper attempt at explaining why graviteases and rainbows and the military and sex seem to all be conflated in this book.

Are we having fun yet?

No.

Obviously, it’s beyond me to speculate. I won’t even earn a Phd if I try and tease it all out on paper, so why try harder? I rock hard harder, of course. But that’s neither here nor hair. Let me just say though: I can’t quite understand how gravity is really just a wrinkle in time rather than a warp in space to begin with rather than a force rather than a function of electromagnetism. I’ll let the Maxwells and the Penroses and the Einsteins fuk with it. No matter how many times I try to understand the concept of spacetime the more my mind just boggles. I can’t help from experiencing, as a practical common sense practice, these two things as discrete.

Hey, I’m just riffing.

I wonder-- is that why this book is so good? Does the title really communicate that Pynchon seeks to take physics as metaphor for spirit? Does the multiplication of meanings in the mind of a curious reader really justify a book that is indulgently confusing as all hell? Maybe, I dunno.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the book’s title does reference two of the four major forces of this universe. Since one of the good things about reading books is the experience of speculative reverberations, let’s swing. Ambiguity, multiplicity, these are the invigorations of any good writing. I suppose that instead of dogging on it (an easy rejection of ambiguity and complexity), I can play with it and enjoy it. Why not, I guess. After all, the seeking of patterns is what we humans do. It’s what scientists seek to quantify when they encounter the phenomena of this spacetime fabric which wraps and warps and woofs around us. So, sure-- I’ll go with it for now. I hope you enjoy having me as your accompaniment. (That uses the root Companion, too).

One thing I can say I get: the metaphor of gravity being a source of cycles in life is fine. Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. The rise and the fall. Life, death, rebirth. Birthdays, the gravity-based revolving around a sun which gives structure to our lives year by year. The Eleusinian Mysteries, if you want to throw that in. Then there’s cycles of hope paired with despair, building structures that decay and collapse, empires that rise and fall. Organization and disorganization from which we reorganize. energy and calm. The frustration of life, in which we confront our failures and frailties again and again, which I once heard described as a spiral staircase since we often cover the same ground again and again in life, only at different elevations. Circling around our core natures, prone to ambition and ruin. The desire to love, the dissolution of the spirit, the dialectical nature of things. I get that.

It’s the same pun that Van Dyke Parks was quoting in the lyrics of the BeachBot’s masterpiece SMiLE. Bi-cycle Rider playing cards and manifest destiny, no doubt. Over and over.

But when it comes to entropy... that’s a one-way ticket to ye olde heat death of the universe. So... does the cycle of nature metaphor really hold for this text? Or does complexity devolve inexorably until it scatters and does every bit of animation in every atom in the universe finally come to an interminably long grave?

How about that, Pynche? How does the gravity/cycle metaphor play out in the long run? Nothing returns to nothing.

Maybe I’m taking this too far, I dunno.

Moving on, then. There’s one interesting thing that the author of A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion, Mr. Weisenburger, says about GR that I can pass on to you. The book, he says, offers observations about “The points of connection between (on the one hand) procedures of science and technology and (on the other) the rituals of religion and occultism...”

Sounds cool. But is there really overlap? Is it Pynchon’s thesis that the rigid, dispassionate and objective attempts of science to decode the universe are really just other forms of mysticism cloaked in a thin skin of rationality? Is “Any sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic” like Arthur C Clarke’s Third Law postulates? Is a ‘faith’ in rationality and logical explanations (math, the language of universe, yet as subjective and undefinable as any other human discipline despite being a bit more rigorous and orderly on its face) always something that slides into a questionable superstitious genuflection or worship? Maybe that’s the universe too-- unfathomable in the end, always receding like a horizon as we move forward into it.

Is there no end to this shit? It’s tedious to read, I know. I fuckin warned you.

Here’s one thing: I remember once debating with my boss at a school I used to teach at. He would press religion on his students. I said that we better stick to humanism and science. He said: “ah ha, see you have ‘faith’ in science. It’s the same thing as my faith!” I disagreed. I noted that science was a method, not an absolute answer. It was flexible and open to modification rather than the rigid genuflection that the sacred demands of us (or, rather that those who weaponize the sacred demand of us). Plus, I said, it was based on evidence, unlike the way faith just whips up answers for shit out of thin air based on a book written by some desert nomads a few millennia ago. To the degree that science offered evidence via a structured method, fine. But I didn’t worship science. I wasn’t lighting candles to science and expecting it to take me to heaven. It was merely a servicable process to yield explanations for natural phenomena, and those explanations made my refrigerator run. So-- yea, I like material pleasures and comfort enough to subscribe to it. But I don’t pray to it.

He didn’t see the distinction, because his faith allowed him to grasp at straws and claim that his belief in ghosts was a fine false equivalent to mere appreciation of natural laws of the universe based on our method of gathering currently non-absolute understandings of evidence. Beyond that, though, I appreciate the urge to find meaning in this cold swirl of atoms. I sympathize with the desire for the sacred. I’m just skeptical that many religions’ demand that their man in the sky is the right one. Rainbows are also in the sky, and at least they warm you when they hit your skin.

So, regardless (or, ok-- with some certain regard), is Pynchon saying we possess a human-borne fatal flaw, a hubris that causes its own downfall? Is it true that science replaces the spirit or the human with something less divine and therefore lacking? Is it we’re just sexy beasts toying with our magnifying glasses, happy to burn the other aunts? Do we deify science in order to place mankind and our individual will to meaning on par with Godhead, twisting into a pseudo-sacred (thus irrational) posture that allows a refutation of our otherwise meaningless lives? And does that somehow rob us of the intended goal?

The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin away, as Simon sang.

What about our hopes of producing a better society, a rational one, based on moral, spiritually fulfilling action? What about my hope to construct a Gravity’s Rainbow Demystifier, an amazing fussy Oedipuss edi-face to my hubris?

It’s a game we play, I guess. Does science become occult (like that Crowley Ordo Temple acolyte Jack Parsons who founded the Jet Propulsion Lab thought? He also believed in all kinds of crazy Thelemite occultist bullshit), something that exploits the religious urge for deceptive purposes in order to empower gurus, industrialists, or indulge in magical thinking? (I suppose that’s the danger of the occult beyond the simple production of a lot of mediocre metal bands).

One wonders. Perhaps that’s the intention, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to read the author’s autobio tome too. Sigh.

(I think that if Pynchon doesn’t evoke Parsons then he’s missing out on a perfect collision of the sacred and the profane, too).

So, aw hell-- maybe cryptology is a theme of this book by way of the critique of pure science, and he blenderizes it all like a banana to toy with the difficulty of readers parsing signs and assembling them into interpretation. But I’m sniffing it all out on the right vapor trail, I think.

After all, don’t the main characters try to predict based on patterns, analyzing signals like a radar system peeking into the future? Doesn’t the military have to do that a lot, just to make sure the missiles don’t land on any girl’s schools in Iran by mistake?

So, great. Fine and good. Here we are, my troops. All of this garbage light speculation is why every dense text needs a Mr. de-myster, and it’s also the reason that English teachers have jobs and ScrubSnackkers post online. That’s because the big brain-bugging ambiguity of language is just a buggy virus from outerspace.

In the end, this book’s bumbling military (enjoying an artificial order by use of threat, based on hierarchy, somewhat scientific but also in love with power until it produces a passionate intensity of the worst kind, the violent threat of nature’s force unleashed) is a major cut-diamond lens through which Pynchon’s ideas refract in geometric arrays of light and insight. Right?

So I’m going to look for clues in the text for that. Maybe call it Crypto-Codebreaking. Or just textual sex, clockblocking, blockcaulking.

Jesus, I should just stop while I’m ahead. (I use Jesus as a curse-word, don’t read anything literal into it. It’s idiomatic).

I did notice that Weisenburger mentions shit like we all might be in a cohort of “Pynchon’s poststructuralist, deconstructionist readers” who don’t like that “a particular signifier might totalize one’s reading of the novel.” Which means: some symbols in the book are too simple, others are overwrought. Don’t read into things too much, but go ahead anyway.

Forget it. This little Demystifyer has gotta be more like a fantasia because anything else risks making the same mistake the people in the book make (which Pynchon critiques): trying too hard to impose meaning on things that won’t conform to our weak little perceptions, ambitions, and flawed scientific urge to master the world. Same way we try to hard to force a good time on new years eve, or hope we’re lotharios in bed.

So hey-- fantastic. I’m just going to free-associate and bitch a little instead of identifying a grand structure that underpins the novel from here on out.

Weisenburger no doubt does it better than me anyway. He says, “Across the novel’s four parts, historical events intersect the Christian liturgical calendar, suggesting possibilities for return and renewal, but [these are] possibilities that Pynchon’s satire hopelessly equivocates on. Indeed, one might well read Gravity’s Rainbow as a satire on the very desire for grand plots or metanarratives.” Yep.

Let’s just say that all of this will exist in the context of a dialogue with the text. This is all a discussion, not a dissertation. A fireside chat, wherein we express admiration and frustration with elements of the book rather than an exegesis. So, don’t get burned by sitting too close to the flames.

Still, one shouldn’t overlook the first part of Van Braun’s quote, however. “Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation.” This is a profound statement, to be sure, concerning most likely the conservation of energy. This is analogous to ideas of rebirth in a way, how a “cycle” comes around. The gravity of the sun of course is the merch-anism of how the Earth traces a circumference in the solar system, giving we wee humans a sense of recurrence. The sun gives light, the son of god gives god, and they told two friends and they killed two friends, and so on.

Finally, the title of the book also contains some puns and root words worth considering. First, In addition, a King asserts dominion over things in what is known as a “reign”, and the warriors at his command in the past also used “bows” as weapons.

Next, the word Gravity also doubtlessly contains “grave”. Beyond the pseudo-profundity of just mentioning death for its woo factor, perhaps one may consider the idea that death is actually a transformation into something beautiful (just as a rainbow transforms light) if you subscribe to that. (Don’t get me started about how it all seems to have originated in the Eleusinian mysteries. That’s for another day, or cycle of the earth).

Dialectically speaking, one cannot have beauty without death (death is the mother of beauty, observed Wallace Stevens. (Death is the mother of death jr, observes Salveson). Moreover, if the book is about coming to terms with the damned nature of human war, its brutal consequences, etc, the idea that it can be paradoxically appreciated, renewed or beautiful is almost a salve on the wound of suffering that war engenders.

The insight is not new of course. The grass is the unkempt hair of graves, and death does not exist or is something wonderful, quoth Whitman the Romantic, for example.

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it
nor ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Well, that’s always a profound insight to put forward. The mystical refutation of the sorrow of our mortality is always salve to the troubled soul, certainly. It is also encoded in Buddhist eschatology. Such a fascinating topic-- that we have to take the good with the bad, if we can just accept how our demise returns us to nature in a transcendent way. But it doesn’t make me feel that lucky, to be honest.

Moving on to more prosaic interpretations, something that has “gravity” is also used as a synonym for “deep importance” or somber, earthy import. This usage probably came from the idea that things pulled close to earth are reminiscent of death, graves, etc, and are serious subjects.

Tired yet, boss? Me too.

So, all of that comes from a rumination on the book’s title, if you can believe it. Then the book starts with that Epigraph from Van Braun, the German rocket-meister. We might ask, in context of what we’ve speculated so far: is the quote from Van B actually sincere? Is Pynchon actually in concordance with the idea that the inherent suffering of war and male aggression, an attempt to conquor nature, the ravening of human appetite upon the subjects of its desire, are not to be feared?

Aw Christ, come save me already. That sentiment I can sympathize with.

Is it all because what goes down must also come up? That’s tempting to think, even though the opposite interpretation of Gravbow seems to be true-- the book is a cynical sneer, it satirizes the failings and shortcomings of humanity with a gimlet eye, and the impact of extinction is real.

After all, while it may be an idealistic idea to assert, “hey death is ok because we all return to nature which cycles on, meaning in an abstract way you never disappear from the universe. Tut tut.” Yeah, nah. I don’t feel better about the world’s suffering right now, anyway.

Sure, extinction is transmuted into a different form of energy, but the idea of entropy is that high-energy organized states get disorganized. I can’t say that I’m quite comforted to know that my potential energy, embedded in the dirt of the grave I’ll be buried in, is any relief to my fear of dying. After all, gravity may one day pull the earth towards the sun with a great degree of force and my ashes will be part of the mass upon which the sun’s gas reacts, and the explosion that it all creates might be spectacular and eject my atoms into the wider universe, but... I’ll still be dead and it’s not a great trade-off to exchange my highly coherent energy with a dispersal of my being into the cold entropy of the cosmos’ future. Some consolation.

If those ideas are going to be sincerely illuminated by Pynchon’s narrative, that’s great. After all, we’re going to die no matter how we feel about it, and any small amount of comfort is better than none I guess. But it’s a little sad that what goes up must come down. Spinnin wheel, got to go ground.

Some Christians even brainwash themselves into believing with gusto that they’ll be granted eternal life in a paradise after this one. That’s pretty hopeful and mystical, tho. And it seems contradictory to the universe’s physics and the second law of thermodynamics. (In any event, while religious topics do get referenced by this book, I’m not sure they’re central to understanding or explicating the true thrust of the narrative, but we’ll allow it for now. Maybe I’ll be unpleasantly surprised).

Fact is, we don’t get more coherent over time in order to arrive in a paradise of zero entropy one day, do we? Naw, methinks. Heaven forbid if we do.

See, from what I know, which isn’t much, the rainbow curves into a circle, the rockets fall to earth, and all empires crumble. Just ask Ozymandius. ‘Cause, you know, like Whitman said: What is called good is perfect, and what is called bad is just as perfect.

Got it yet? Well, “what satisfies the soul is truth” quote Walter White or someone like him. But I don’t think Newton would agree quite so readily.

Anyway, that’s enough gazing on the navel-visage of Pynche and mankind’s war-ravaged cycles of violence and rebuilding for today, I guess. Satisfied yet? Me neither. I’m just spent, exhausted, like a rocket low on fuel.

I gotta go tremble somewhere else now, dear reader, perhaps after I ignite a rocket or two to help me indulge in the cycle of sleep before I rise again.

I’m too tired to even pitch you subscribing down here at the bottom.

Do what thou wilt.

Plum Blossoms in Late Spring

Is there any sweeter fragrance than

the plum blossoms that lace a casket?

For many days this early spring I passed

by these gently beckoning trees,

their friendly arms reaching out to me,

fingertips adorned with the new pink

and honeyed buds, profferings of three

sugar-pollened friends of winter.

Perfume rose to tickle softly

on the nose and the busy brain. I know.

But I was in a hurry, I rushed by

without pause; no time to greet

that Rosacean sweetness, so redolent.

Yet she cupped new life in her hands.

Was it so hard for me to give the simple

appreciation she pleaded for?

Often to myself I had said, under my breath,

Surely I’ll have all the gracious time

in the world for cultivated beauty when

I’m resting in my grave.

晚春的梅花

有什么比围绕棺木的梅

花更甜美的香气吗？

在早春的许多日子里，

我走过这些温柔 招手的树木，

它们友 好的枝条向我伸出，

指尖点缀着新鲜的粉色

和蜜色的花蕾，这三个冬天

的甜果和授粉的朋友们。

花香飘来，轻轻触碰我的鼻子

和忙碌的大脑。我知道。

但我很匆忙，急忙走过，

没有停留的时间；没有时间去

迎接她玫瑰般的甜美，

尽管她充满了新生和希望。

对我来说，真心地给予她

所恳求的简单而真实的欣赏，

真的有那么难吗？

我常常对自己低声说：当然，

闲暇的时间来欣赏精

心培育的美丽

我会有世界上所有

当我安息于坟墓之时.

Before we get started, here’s a friendly tip from your ship’s captain: I will try to orient readers who might otherwise feel bogged down (or worry they’ve become a wader into the deep weeds of the text) with a few savvy signposts to circumscribe many of the passages I analyze or extemporaneously expound upon.

Like those signs posted on the fences of hotel pools, you’ll want to know when it’s safe to dive in and where there are places in the novel that you might smack your head on the plaster due to the shallow end’s cloying illusion of depth. Dive head-first at your own risk.

I’ll try to label my observations with these 12 or 13 headers to orient you a bit when I find it useful.

1. Can I just skip it? Perhaps this is the signpost with the greatest utility.
2. What does it all add up to? Should I really care?
3. Is it just showing off?
4. Are these people important?
5. Metafiction/Post-Modern Author at Play
6. Check the technique
7. Who the hell are you anyway? Or: It’s all about me, naturally. These are moments where I critique my own involvement with the text.
8. I forget what eight was gonna be.
9. Humor alert
10. Narrative Pyrotechniques
11. Prediction Markets
12. Unnecessary Verbosity
13. Biggus Picturus

Note: the page numbers are fungible because I am using Calibre to read a digital version of the book. So if I just make the font smaller or the reading-frame bigger, I can screw up all the page numbers. To that degree, this is useless as a page by page guide. Instead, consider it a companion. Pretend that you just read some long passage and want check with a close friend like me about it, the better for your appreciation or comprehension. That’s all I can offer.

Meanwhile, I know there’s a Pynchonwiki.com and a bunch of others who have done the same thing, so the value I add here is nominal. But, like most acts of hubris, I will sally forth firing off my Salvos as best I can.

Here’s the link for Pt.2 of this reader’s companion (which I posted out of order because why not).

CHAPTER NUMERO UNO

Pg 1. The book begins with an epigraph from Werner Von Braun, a German rocket scientist. His quip about a belief in life after death might be a somewhat sarcastic use of the quote by Pynchon, since it implies a spiritual concern that the inventor of destructive forces couldn’t have cared that much about given the number of lives his inventions slaughtered.

Or if he did care, maybe Pynch is suggesting he was delusional. In fact, the idea that the West is off its axis must be the main theme of the book, or why all the crazy, nutty hijinks that ensue? So that’s my thesis.

If we are to believe that Pynchon’s use of the quote is sincere and Von Braun’s idea is to be taken at face value (though I can’t take it seriously, honestly), it may be interpreted two ways: first, it suggests that the book will be concerned with weighty themes such as the spirit and finding it or maintaining it (despite many indications to the contrary).

Second, the idea may be that the technology Von Braun created is considered by Pynchon to be a “ghost” that lives on and haunts the world today (given that the threat of nuclear extinction of the species via such rockets was a prime concern of people living in the 60s and 70s when the book was first written; it is still a paramount concern today). By understanding the past (this ghost) perhaps Pynchon is guiding us to a state of better living through necromancy? Your call.

Pg 2-3: The novel begins with a rocket “screaming” across the sky, a nice bit of personification that references horror over the human death and destruction of such rockets, I’m supposing.

After that, the text presents us with a circumspect “him” (alluded to but not elaborated upon ever again) and numerous paragraphs of arch description which attempt to create a certain sense of historical weight and import to the book right from the start.

Can I skip it? Probably. Or just skim the pages. Given that nothing in the passage does much beyond establish the emotionally distant, impersonal but incisive historical tone that Pynchon clobbers us, why work harder?

Ok, back up. There’s gotta be a reason for it. I can confidently say that anticipating and being allright with Py’s abrupt shifts in narrative distance are key to navigating the turbulent airflight ride of this book. He regularly takes the liberty of hammering readers with abrupt shifts of tone and perspective. There are various streams of consciousness that erupt quite often in the book. Get used to it.

One may ask: who’s consciousness? The obvious answer: every inch is Iynchon’s, in all its permutations. That’s including his main character Pirate, who is just an avatar for the author, I’m supposing.

But while Pynchon doesn’t wink at us in terms of including himself as an explicit character in his book (like Vonnegut does) to break the 4th wall, his god-like manipulation of all we experience is ever-present. Pirate (like the author, a Mr. P) might be a doppler-ganger for the personal hero/anti-hero of our beloved author himself. Perhaps Pynchon dialectically plays with himself with throughout the book in this way. I guess, maybe. Why not? It’d be a missed opportunity given that auto-eroticism is one of the themes of the book. If “self-abuse” is one of the West’s biggest sins, then the destructive desecration of all that is holy follows from it, one stroke (ahem) of the writer’s pen (ahem) at a time.

So who’s voice is it that is doing the narrating in these first few pages? A distant historian’s, I guess. A dimension of the author, naturally.

One may ask: is the book about consciousness itself? No, not like Joyce or Faulkner. No, not like Joyce or Faulkner. Rather, it is about geopolitical psychology (but not neuroscience even if there’s a whiff of that as animated by a innovative prose style). Specifically, it’s mostly Freudian or Jungian, I suppose: the dysfunctional psychology of toxic masculinity in a post-war world culture, one which reduces the world to materialist concerns and a desire to dominate (while still being spectred a little by what Carl Sagan called ‘the demon-haunted world’ of our more bestial natures, bubbling just under the surface of civilization).

At least, that’s what I guess. No wonder, then, that the first scene is about a collapsing civilization, dusted to busted.

This goes on for a page or two and is not too important to plot or theme, really. So should you skip it? Naw. I mean-- c’mon, it’s the start of the freaky book! Have some patience and give it a chance. There will be plenty to skip later on.

It’s all about me, naturally. Am I being harsh by saying parts of this book are skippable or at least swimmable? Let’s be honest-- one of the most useful things that this Gravity’s Rainbow Reader’s Companion offers is to provide sensible, practical answers to the questions a sane reader would ask about this book, which are chiefly: are these pages important or is it just Pynchon losing the plot? Are these characters important? And: do I need to care, especially if some pages are just circuitous asides, smarmy jokes, crude erudite crud, or masturbatory intellectualism?

If I can answer some of those nagging questions, I might actually offer a service to those foolhardy enough to try and read Gravity’s Rainbow and this Companion at the same time. That’s the service this little scalpel and dissection of mine will hopefully offer, something I consider a prime value for anyone trying to read the book along with a footnote-laden running criticism of the tome. So let’s soar the friendly skies together, unflappably flapping our wings as we go.

See, a companion is someone who’s there for you in the bad times, who holds your hand and tells you that everything will be all right, just hang in there like a rocket in the air. Everything will come back down to Earth eventually.

So I hope that the companionship I give while we read this book together will be able to offer some of that, at least enough to assuage your anxiety when facing a book which might intimidate, confuse, or even mock its own readers (and definitely ridicules its numerous cartoon-drawn characters).

Pg. 2-3. Moving on back to the text, we can observe that in these first paragraphs and first several pages, there are mentions of empty “cars”, an “iron queen”, “crystal”, etc, all of which might seem to vaguely symbolize various elements of social structures and strictures, perhaps of a better age lost to war, and suggest something emblematic about the dashed hopes of the human spirt.

I mean, you could think that if only you could decipher the obtuse scene and wanted to ascribe deep purpose to the paragraphs. Yet he wants to keep you relatively unmoored. I suppose for a book that will do that across 700 plus pages, why not get the party started right?

It seems that some people are on a train and then are getting off a train, but the details are kept impressionistic so that Pynchon can create some tension or initial anxiety via a deliberate lack of orientation for the reader. I suppose this mirrors the anxiety of the situation, since these characters --such as they are-- are also displaced.

Is it on purpose? Is Pynchon as an author being an authoritarian to his readers? Is Pynchon saying writers are Nazis, and he is Herr Konductor (not a real German word) who is pushing readers around on trains of thought in their brains the same way? After all, he exerts total control. It would have been clever if that was the point.

Ok-- nevermind I asked.

Well, ok, I did. So you deserve an answer-- does Pynchon disorient us on purpose so that we emotionally experience the same stress that the displaced characters do? Perhaps.

Is it Metafiction? Maybe he’s just showing off. I know the book is meta, but probably that’s not one of the layers one can peel back and slice or dice to toss in a sizzling brainpain, in my opinion. Not yet. Later the banana blender will be the metaphor for his post-modernism, I think. So this is just a painful passage and it’s not that hard but also not so pleasing for readers trying to parse it, if you ask me.

Still, I’ll give him credit and assume that it’s deliberate in an unconscious way. By that, I mean that he’s going to be dipping into all kinds of narrative trick-bags and doodling with his own scat at will, so he wants you to get used to it (to some degree).

After all, this wouldn’t be considered a great novel stamped with the seal of authenticity unless it was understood to be written by a master, someone who chooses the effect he wants to inflict on the reader. (Still --from the perspective of an editor at Knopf or Doom-Kopff or where ever this manuscript landed with a thud in the late 60s publishing world-- I wonder if this first scene got the book rejected over and over again before some savvy publisher stepped in and said “genius is difficult; the more obscure this is the more marketable it becomes” or some other green-light bromide. Because, honestly…)

What does it all add up to? Not much so far, but from here on out, we’ll assume that whatever the novel is doing is by design and not just some academic-guy masturbation on the part of Pynchon, done without self-conscious appreciation for how his style might offend or confuse readers. Or maybe not, as the case may bleed. Let’s hope for the best, shall we? For the most part, we’ll assume at least that it’s more than just intellectual onanism. Because why not give a genius the benefit of the doubt? I know I won’t, but you can, charitable soul that you are.

Nonetheless, in this passage it’s clear that the point is: there is no main character to focus on-- we’re told about a group of people getting off a train, and they’re presented as fairly disembodied and without agency. One gets the impression that it’s reminiscent of Nazi trains? So, ok. The guy’s putting points on the board in terms of his anti-fascism theme.

This is all fine for the first page or two pages which basically --if we can infer-- all reference the displaced, upended feeling of humans upon the occasion of a missile attack during world war 2. One supposes. So it’s appropriately bleak and cinematic.

A surfeit of details suffices in lieu of actual plot or character, including a mention of “salvation” such that spiritual themes are clearly present amid the detritus of the scene’s descriptions.

Next, this faceless apparition of a crowd* moves on into a derelict city, replete with a tone that suggests barely buried contempt over the decay of a metropolis reduced to rubble due to war and post-war disturbances. *Thanks, Ezra Pound.

Then they are moved to a hotel, also decrepit. Their rooms are inexplicably called “invisible”. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they’re actually dead? It’s a bit too much, that last bit. He’s trying to elicit some appreciation of grand themes, I guess.

What does it add up to? As your companion, I’m supposed to figure it all out for you and encapsulate the book. That’s because if I don’t then I’m just adding a layer of semantics to an already semantically over-loaded book. So, ok, this is what I figure: clearly, Pynchon is setting a tone and sense of high dudgeon, offering intellectual distance that borders on heady historical observation and moral derision. He does it by withholding details that would orient the reader.

Post-Modern Author at Play. A few pages in (say by page 4), Pynchon pulls out a good trick from his hat, given that he realizes all of this so far is impersonal. Cleverly, he delivers a sudden modernist (or post-modernist, as we will apparently discover) shift in perspective and tone. He berates us for having hope.

Perhaps the author realized that his initial distance was a bit alienating to the reader. That’s us, lost souls who can barely get their bearings. Suddenly he contrasts the disorientation with a direct address to the reader (or a reader proxy, a “you” which he says is an imaginary voice that each person hears). In a patronizing or accusatory tone, Pynchon belittles the human hopes a person in such a situation might cling to.

Well, at least he’s not just describing things anymore, he’s talking to us. This humanizes things a bit with a burst of pure pathos.

And is he also saying, “readers, don’t have hope this fucking book will make any sense”?

God, I hope not. But I wouldn’t put it past him. This author’s contempt may prove nearly limitless. If I know authors, their own self-loathing for not being a great writer always informs their subtext, too, so he may be flagellating the reading public as a mode of psychological transference to relieve his own psychological shortcomings. Nice work if you can get it.

Narrative Pyrotechniques: Now, we say “Pynchon” whenever we talk about the author doing something, though it would be smarter to say, “our narrator” does such and such. Too bad. Going forward we will just call the narrator (who may shift tones, perspectives, and approaches) Pynchon. Or pinche, for the Spanish joke. Or Pinner, Hesterical Pyn, P., or whatever else I can gin up as cheap comedy. Or: Pync (pronounced Pink, I think, because anyone who questions the military is a pinko).

Why would I mock Py-write so carelessly? It’s because this book is all about the author proving their intellect, if we can boldly assert that much so early on. I mean, I guess I can infer that truth from reputation and hearsay. So all the book’s narrators and pyrotechnical narrative techniques are essentially ‘pick me’ author tropes that El Pincher pulls out of his prison pocket. At least that’s my hot-take.

He’s the carnival barker promising the three-ring circus he’s orchestrating, fireworks included. It’s all about him and his ability to juggle, far as I can tell.

Certainly, every strategy he uses evokes and draws attention to the author explicitly since the disorientation he throws at readers constantly is more about demonstrating that, as an author, he is in control and we’re along for the ride without an inkling of where we’re going. Because he has the big brain, dummy! He understands fizziks better than you, for starters. (I guess it’s excusable if it’s post-modern, and he’s just using the book as a self-critique of authorship itself).

To that degree, Pynchon is not a naturalist trying to disappear and let the story tell itself, he is the captain of the ship and he steers our attention or manipulates form, genre, and medium everywhere and at all times for ostentatious effect. We’re in for stormy whether or not we like it, so I gather. We’ll see.

Who the hell are you? Yeah, I’m not one to talk given that I’m basically doing the same performance here, too. In fact, I’ll admit that this little Companion is also about me proving my intellect, ha ha, which is also so meta.

Why? It’s because the thing an intellect hates the most is someone like themselves --say, Pynchon-- who is an even smarter, better intellect than they are. Ammi-rite? Ammo write? So, to that degree, the only thing I can do with my meager grey matter is try to take people greater than me down a peg! I hope you’ll enjoy it, even if part of you is saying ‘don’t believe the snipe.’

Because I know that sounds petty, what I can do here is actually appreciate TP USA’s greatness a little more while I try and tease out the meanings embedded in a great work of art.

I automanically do it all for the people like you, dear readers who are even more bewildered by this text and its supposed genius than I am. Why else would you need a companion for it?

So, for now, let me just say that it’s fun to take a golden arch tone about the book and Pynchon. Why not have a bit of amusement in this park? I might even appear hyper-critical or sesquipedalian sometimes, playing the same intellectual game as the author himself. Of course, he’s made more money than me as a writer, so he’s got that going for him. How could I not be doing this as a tribute?

Let me just admit and state for the record that I respect Pynchon’s talents and insights more than I let on sometimes. I mean, it’s good prose full of ideas that are, if not naturalist and seeking to generate empathy, quite well-observed. There’s a place for that in fiction, to be sure. Each idea he bodies forth carries the weight of a kind of moral position that expresses itself in word-choices and a certain focus on a fascinating collide-o-scope of emotional detachment.

This is the intellect’s response: to keep a distance from the suffering one encounters or depicts. You can’t let yourself get singed when you play with fire, naturally.

One thing I respect so far is: his intellectualizing of the horrors of war is a natural sarcastic self-preservation response. It’s one which I personally enjoy. I get why he does it. After all, what other position could one take when confronted with the terrible tragedies of war, all that human displacement and pain? Either one distances oneself or one becomes mawkish, at risk of sentimentality (consumed unto ruin). Pynchon, we will see, is basically a god telling this story and he has a deity's gimlet eye towards all the pain he witnesses or creates.

No wonder he addresses the reader directly (or a reader surrogate) to say, essentially, “give up hope all ye who enter” ala Dante.

Hope is a fool’s errand in this book. So he tells us directly.

Should I care? Sure, why not. When the author suddenly switches from an impersonal, arch description to a personal, accusatory tone towards both those characters in the book as well as we readers, it’s effectively jarring and elicits the proper response of feeling chastised.

I also suspect Pynchon does it because he realized that a moralizing historical tone can get impersonal. Ergo a quick shift to the second person: you are deluded as someone who hopes that war won’t destroy you. Your emotions roil pathetically, etc.

And hey-- readers shouldn’t expect much comfort from this author either. You’re a fool for expecting this book to be teleologically satisfying. Just like life.

It’s an effective tonal whiplash because the shift in narrative distance and timbre offers a contrast that is arresting for being so sudden. The subtext becomes explicit and in your face like a stab of a fork in your eye from an old waiter at a supper club where you were dining.

The jarring move from impersonal descriptions of destruction to an internal monologue --ala you think to yourself, hey-- sucks!-- is clever. It injects some clear readable (instead of inscrewtable) emotion into things and reinforces the theme of spirit. Sadly, it’s a spirit predestined to die, naively innocent yet fearful of such inevitable demise, I suppose.

Is that what this book’s really about? Maybe, we’ll see.

Clearly, he accuses us (we the readers are the “they” who listen to our internal dialogues as we read, just as we’ve been carrying on a dialogue with the author and feel disoriented) of being sentimental. Only a fool has hopes. Or, in other words, “you didn’t really believe you’d be saved, did you?” No one gets outta this book alive.

Pynchon is the Inquisitor; the questions mock. Well, at least the talk of “salvation” he mentions in this passage references again the heady spiritual aspect of the book, as presaged in the epigraph. Yet it’s nihilistic and so hardly spiritual in the way we often think of such things.

Metafiction Alert. It’s a neat trick-- as readers of a book in a post-war world where nukes still dangle over our damn-ocles heads, we’re all war survivors in a way… stumbling along, trained by forces greater than us (and by the author, if this metaphor holds wasser) to follow and obey. We’re bewildered too, just like war refugees. Our hopes for “salvation” or any other kind of sensible meaning is a foolish hope. Aint that just like life? And aint a writer just like god? And aint we pushed around by fate and circumstance as readers the same way Nazis might push around humans, and in the same way that life pushes around all of us in ways that are beyond our control?

Yeah, probably not, but… I get paid by the word for this. (Please subscribe to my Stubsclack).

Still, we yet don’t even know or haven’t been told what is really going on, so thanks for nothing, Pynche. And why should we (the “you” as a stand-in for the reader, who is also being yanked along the story) expect to understand this absurd world? Instead, buckle up, it’s going to be 800 pages of this shit.

Then we get a paragraph about how the light comes (dawn) in a verbose way. It seems people are sleeping in a room. It takes a paragraph to say that, entertained as he is by the sound of his own obstusity.

Unnecessary Verbosity: windows are “mullioned” for no other reason than to show the author knows the word.

And so we’re off!

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Molly Malone Mapkins was thirteen years old going on thirty at a furious clip. Precocious wasn’t even the right word for her. In fact, she’d be the first to tell you that. She’d say, “Precocious, from the Latin, Coquere. It means to cook. Am I pre-cooked? I think not!”

Of course, when Matt Majors heard someone near the front of the airplane-line waiting to board speak those very words, he had to look. It sounded like someone else on the same flight was near his age, though he realized her mental age was impossible to guess.

The boy (decked out in ballcap, faded jeans jacket and ratty untied Chuck Taylors) decided to risk a peek instead of keeping his eyes glued to the ground the way he usually did. What he saw bowled him over, or nearly so: there in front of him was a girl dressed as if she was the pilot who was going to be flying the plane!

So that was the historic moment when Matt Majors met Molly Mapkins for the first time. Little did he know what adventures she would lead him on. Well, that was one way of looking at it. Another person might have called it getting dragged to death’s door and back.

It was May in the year of our Lord 1960. Typical of Spring in the Northwest (and anytime in Seattle for that matter), there had been a light Washington state drizzle in the air that morning. The props of the TWA aircraft readying for departure in front of them on the tarmac were starting to spin, whipping up a furious wind. Small droplets of water sparkled in the air, producing a radiant halo around the girl’s head. The mist moistened everyone’s faces a little as they waited; Matt noticed it also made Molly’s multicolored scarf flutter in the late morning swirl. Quite cinematic, really.

Sometimes patches of light would break through the swiftly moving clouds, and they did so again just as the girl’s red hair caught some of the wet air quite radiantly. Solitary beads glittered upon her silk scarf, too, as if a few tiny diamonds had been sewn into the cloth; more seemed woven into her coppery tresses as if she was a veritable fairy.

The glint of light had caught Matt’s eye, but he looked away when the fairy seemed to turn the corner of her glare at him. He pretended to inspect the boarding process going on at the top of the stairs leading to the plane instead.

In his heart, he was of course excited though he hid it well. They were both on a journey to Anchorage, Alaska and then on to Vladistovok, Russia.

Plus far more, though he didn’t know it yet.

Molly squinted from under her bangs at Matt; the dumb boy was peering doubtfully up the stairway contraption which the Pan Am ground crew had rolled over to the plane's fuselage. Three stewardesses were helping an old couple through the plane's portico ever so gently while the mist threatened to become a certified drizzle. Her peek behind at the boy in the back was only for a calculated moment, just as a security measure. She could tell that he was shuddering. What she didn't know for sure, but could guess, was that this was Matt's first flight ever and he was anxious given the weather. It even gave Molly pause for a moment, though she fought to hide her trepidation.

Matt and his father were in fact last in line to board, having arrived fairly late to the gate. Molly and her mother were next to last in line, having arrived three hours early… after which they had set up camp in the terminal. That was their normal procedure. It meant they had methodically made a nice butternut squash soup in the luxurious amount of time they had managed to grab while they generously let everyone else arrive and get in line to board first. Like cattle, Molly had observed while unpacking her can of sterno.

She remembered with some amusement the bewildered look on the face of the Pan Am flight 333 check-in counter worker when the lady witnessed Molly’s mom set alight the instant-fire can and place it underneath a small saucepan rack (one which Molly had drawn from her luggage and unfolded like an expert).

In fact, given what that lady had seen of them all morning, perhaps she would not have been so shocked if, next, they had tried to get a full campfire blazing in the middle of the terminal. The woman, named Miss Steph, had seen all kinds, but never anyone like this. They were pros, down to the inflatable pillows in the shape of the dog TinTin which she witnessed them blow up and use.

First they had rolled out one of their sleeping bags for the little girl; she had climbed halfway in and nicked a short nap for herself before lunch. Meanwhile, the girl’s mother had cracked a thermos of soup to warm up while preparing an entire meal replete with banana, soda crackers, and peanut-buttered bread , all of which she drew from a gingham sack slung around her back. When Molly woke up, her mom had served the hot liquid in a tin cup like mountaineers would have used. Then they both sat and sipped their soup while a long line of people shuffled past them, all headed out to the tarmac through the glass door at the back of the terminal.

Miss Steph had always been a little amused at the barely suppressed, bottled-up frustration of those in line, people who were so close and yet so far from their vacation, trailing their overstuffed suitcases behind them on leashes like molded square plastic pets as they waited to board. In contrast, she admired the nonchalant relaxed picnic atmosphere which Molly and her mom had achieved.

Of course, Steph enjoyed her job. She welcomed the parade of those who had the time and privilege to be able to afford this new type of commercial air travel for the masses, even if they were a bit uncomfortable with the inevitable delays of being herded. She herself was able to fly where she wanted to for free, and that sense of adventure each day was enough to make the job worth it. In fact, after working the gate that day she was going to board as well, and was quite looking forward to visiting Japan, her final destination after the Russia layover. She couldn’t wait, and shifted from pump heel to pump heel while she took boarding passes from passengers. For each, she offered the genuine smile that made her good at her work.

If others (unlike this woman and her daughter who were now cleaning up their camp and reading a book respectively) didn’t prepare themselves mentally for what could be a wondrous but sometimes exasperating experience, that was just too bad.

Meanwhile, while pretending to read (but actually glancing over the top of her book to spy), Molly had practiced clandestinely surveilling all the passengers creeping forward one by one in line as they paraded in front of her, never letting them know she was cataloging their every characteristic. There was the sweaty man, practically pale as a blue iceberg, who seemed to be breathing heavier than he should; he had no bags. Then there was the lady wearing a fashionable pink hat with ostrich feathers. Next, a family of three older brothers and their dad, one boy with a big wrap of bandages on his hand and a cast around his arm; a newly married couple; a business-woman with a rope of tautly braided hair. Each seemed innocuous enough.

There was also a newly divorced single man in his 40's wearing a businessman's suit and tie, hair slicked. She figured it out when she saw him pull on a gaunt, bare ring finger repeatedly. It was thin behind the knuckle, a place where she could see he constantly worried the skin. He couldn’t stop sighing. Molly also noticed a very tall man in a tan cowboy hat slowly make his way along the line (one kick of his boot against his duffel bag at a time) while a swarthy man in a Nehru jacket, who wore sunglasses indoors, seemed to regard the others with studied indifference. This particular person failed to acknowledge anyone, which she found suspicious. All of these people went into her mental notebook, naturally, filed away for future reference.

Molly’s mother (Winnie Mapkins) sat with her daughter placidly, of course, and they both finished their peanut butter sandwiches (from a brown paper bag which she then folded neatly) and smiled at each of the passengers who were boarding inch by inch. It was a long coiled line of frustrated aspiration which slowly dwindled in numbers, one clicked-ticket and ‘thank you enjoy your flight’ at a time.

It finally disappeared like a snake slithering back into its hole within a half hour or so. Molly’s mom continued taking bites of her sandwich while she pretended not to notice the last woman in line. This was was a messy-haired, slightly obese lady in a mauve tracksuit who, as she passed by, tightened her jaws into a curled-up lip of doubt like a Rottweiler (apparently the only expression she could muster if the lines on her face were any indication). Perhaps it was supposed to be a smile.

Finally the line had evaporated and the stewardess (named Steph according to her nametag, Molly noted) approached with a weary, slightly frazzled voice and said to Mrs. Mapkins that their flight was nearly ready to leave. Could they pleased consider boarding? “Of course, of course! Would you like a peanut butter sandwich?” Winnie offered. “We have extras!” She held up a brown bag with what looked to be a small oil stain spreading out along its bottom.

Steph declined the offer, so Molly and her mom shrugged in choreographed unison and quickly went back to getting their things ready. Within three minutes the sleeping bag was flattened, rolled and stowed, the soup was bottled up and the utensils wiped clean with a wet rag; then it was all stuffed into the side pockets of their bulging backpacks. The inflatable pillows had their air pressed out of them with squeals of protest in less than thirty seconds, flattened by the pressure of Molly’s knees on the plastic. Molly’s mom was then deftly retrieving their tickets from a wallet which Miss Steph noticed was on a belt strapped around her waist under her boyish checked blouse, all while the nice woman apologized for the momentary delay.

“We just hate to squander time,” she said sensibly. “Hurry up and wait, you know. But we’re all going the same place. Why sit onboard packed like sardines? They’ve just moved from one line at the door to another line at the stairs outside.”

Miss Steph nodded at that. They weren’t wrong.

“Yes, why? When you could be eating sardines out here,” Molly added with a winning smile. She pointed at the can of fish that was stuffed into one of her bag’s side-pockets.

“I guess that’s true,” agreed Miss Steph. She knew from experience that the people in line would only be cooling their heels on the tarmac outside for another ten minutes anyway while the crew went through their pre-flight routine.

As this was happening, she noticed a few stragglers who were hurrying down the terminal hallway, legs and bags akimbo, calling out ‘hold the gate, hold the gate!’ They finally made it to the entrance just as Molly and her mother were getting their tickets checked.

Before Molly could inspect the new arrivals closely, Miss Steph ushered her mother down a small flight of stairs into an atrium type enclosure, indicating they should head past the gate's industrial sized doors onto the airfield's apron. Molly obeyed and followed her mom. Soon they had popped onto the wet cement outside where it was much louder because the plane was starting up its engines.

There, Molly wrapped her silk scarf a little tighter around her neck and grinned at her mother. It was the scarf she had bought in Morocco and she was still in love with it. Now she was going to use it to keep herself dry while she finally got a chance to go to China and do what she loved most in the world: explore and make maps!

She grinned in eager anticipation and admiration for the plane and all its promise.

Behind Molly and her mother, the boy and his father arrived at the back of the line and nearly bowled the Mapkins over with their bags, at least before pulling up short. They had practically run her over! Molly gave a curt nod at the ineptitude of these obviously inexperienced travelers and re-directed her attention towards the airplane and its mysterious underbelly, white as a sow. It inspired Molly to emit a kind of appreciative whistle.

Matt was embarrassed with his father for almost making them late to catch the plane. So, after having almost run over Molly, he dropped his bags heavily onto the cement with a slight exhalation of exasperated air which he couldn’t disguise. A person less sensitive to how words sometimes hurt the feelings of others might even have called it a huff, though Matt had merely meant it as a sigh directed at his dad.

Major Mason, the man in question, gathered himself up and ignored his son’s judgment. They were both lucky to be there at all, given the strings he had had to pull. Then he heard the girl’s whistling and wondered how anyone could be so cheerful. It was kind of sad to leave your birth country behind, heading into what might be called the wild grey yonder. Meanwhile, he could see this sentiment was echoed in his son’s face, and he felt a twinge of guilt and apprehension.

The billowing mist around him intensified the feeling in Matt, too. He was finally facing a world much larger than himself that would swallow him up and spit him out into the a furious maelstrom of fate which would be too much for him to navigate, he worried. And then to almost be late for it! It was all Matt could do to not scold his father.

He held back; his dad had never really been the same since their mom’s passing six months before. Matt hadn’t either, but his dad…well, the man had nearly crumpled into a full-on breakdown, it seemed. So Matt simply redirected his emotion and glared at the stewardesses at the top of the stairs instead while trying to calm himself, breath by breath.

So these were all the slightly dubious circumstances surrounding the moment when Molly first met Matt Majors. Or, rather, she might say it was when Matt met her. The moment when their fates first crossed, they were both getting soggy as leftover toast in a sink full of dishes while waiting in that line to embark. It almost presaged their soapy relationship to come in a lot of ways.

If only they knew what lie in front of them, they might have excused themselves from the line and gone back home with their tails between their legs!

There, at the bottom of the stairs underneath the fuselage, Molly recognized the plane’s Convair 880 propulsion system, with an M61 powering the show. (It was an innovative type of plane propulsion from the good people at General Dynamics in San Diego, which our hero admired with another nearly inadvertent low whistle intended to catch her mother’s attention). She knew her airplanes, just as any decent adventurer should. But her cheer seemed to attract the boy’s attention, too (though she could see that he tried to hide it).

“M61 turbofan with a Vulcan cannon,” said Molly, referring to the engine model with a nod. When that failed to interest her mother, she moved on to a new topic. “I realize, mother, perhaps Easter Island should be on our future wish list as well. Rapas and moais, you know. Fascinating.”

While trying not to intrude, Matt pricked up his ears to better overhear this interesting specimen in front of him explain in detail about the statues at Easter Island. Archeology, Molly noted, was a subset of anthropology, the study of human culture, and archeologists had tried to dig up these great carved stone heads only to discover they were buried deep into the hillside and were in fact much taller than one thought. They had whole bodies attached to them! She demonstrated by moving her clapped hands apart vertically as much as she could, until the span stretched as far as her knees to the top of her head. While she did that she also spied that the boy behind her had apparently become intrigued with the nearly iridescent scarf she sported. It continued to whip in the wind like a flag planted atop one of the hills on Easter Island.

When the clouds parted and a beam of sunlight hit her, it was then that Matt had first leaned in a little closer and really took notice of her. She was about his age, wearing a powder blue Youthquake jumper which was bluer than the sky might have looked (if you could have ever seen it above Seattle’s bank of brooding cumulo-nimbus clouds). She had a matching bow barrette nestled in her red hair near her elfin-shaped ear.

The girl’s mother murmured a feint of surprise and wonder at the Easter Island factoid while scanning the Skybridge for the steward’s progress boarding passengers.

Matt’s father had also overheard the little girl. Beneath the cover of his slightly upturned brown coat collar, he turned to Matt to give a wink and make a comment under his breath. “Precocious girl, eh?”

Matt, who was fourteen himself and more forgiving of dumb parents and the social faux-pas they made, gave a little arch of his eyebrows in response, but it quickly turned into a wince when Molly swiveled around to face them both and address his father directly!

“Excuse me, I overheard your sotto voice comment. Describing me, I presume. While I support your right of free speech, you may want to consider the origin of the word precocious.”

Matt’s Dad got a shocked look, one that might best be described as the face he’d make if an invisible birthday cake had been smushed up his nose, a mix of delight and mortification. The girl then launched into a lecture on Latin etymology to him! In fact, she went on from there to say some other very surprising things too.

“People have tried to cook me before, I must admit, but that is another matter altogether,” she said. Molly managed to get in a little snort about that before going on. “In the Cook islands, coincidentally. I managed to free myself from that iron pot just in time! Luckily, their fire-building skills were simply abominable. One always gets the water to a boil first if one knows what one is doing! I mean, you have to account for changes in elevation. Why they marched me to the top of their mountain I’ll never know. Ritual, I expect. But I’m getting off topic. To wit...” She said, and took a deep breath. “To wit, I am not precocious. I have a lot of growing yet to do. I am simply well-read. I like books, I like learning. That makes me an autodidact. If you want to call me something, you may call me that.”

“But just don’t call my Molly late for dinner!” interjected Molly’s mom, who had swirled around as well when she heard her daughter speak up to a stranger. She tried to smooth over a potentially awkward situation some by getting the upper hand on her talkative progeny. “Ha ha!” she then weakly offered with a conciliatory twist of her mouth, encouraging Matt and his dad to laugh along.

And they did. Matt smiled and did a “Heh-heh,” while his dad positively chortled.

There was a beat, and then Molly’s mom extended her hand out to Matt’s father. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Win Mapkins,” she offered. “Winnie.”

Matt’s father stood there looking like a puppy dog. He had to stifle the gush he would have normally launched into (which Matt had seen before, doubtlessly), due to the extreme pleasure he always felt when meeting people he took an immediate liking to; it kind of made it look like he was wagging a tail he didn’t have, because his whole body shook. It was obvious to Matt that his dad was charmed with how social these two were.

“This is my daughter, Molly,” she continued. “We like to travel.” Win put her other arm around Molly’s shoulder but there was the matter of Molly’s bags being in the way, so she mostly just hugged the big rucksack slung on the girl’s shoulder.

“Yes, we do!” added Molly. “We’re on our way to Vladivostok and then China.”

Matt’s dad woke from his love at first sight trance long enough to take Win’s hand and shake it. “Well, well, nice to meet you, Wendy. And Molly. I’m Tom Major. This is my son, Matt. We’re on our way to Vladis-vos-tk as well.” His voice rang with a little pride in the expert way he formed his Russian syllables, and Matt again winced. His father was really laying it on thick now to impress these two.

“China? What for?” Matt enquired to hopefully try and distract from his father’s over-eagerness.

“Exploring caves. We love to explore and make maps! In BenXi there are underground caves that stretch for miles, some which no one has ever charted. We are going to be the first!”

“Wow,” was all Matt’s dad could utter. He was clearly stricken with Molly’s mother. Even though he was agreeing with Molly that this was quite fascinating, he was saying it more to her mother as if to assure her that he was good with kids or something equally inane. “Woow,” he said again. “That is positively intrepid! You study caves, eh?”

“Speleology,” she replied. “The discipline is Speleology, the study of karsts and speleogenesis, how they form, that sort of thing. Spelunking is the act of exploring caves, and mapping them. I enjoy both things.”

“So you do!” replied Mr. Major almost to the point of sounding patronizing.

At this point they were making their way up the stairs a few at a time while they talked. Matt struggled to get their bags to rest on the step above him (which was near Molly’s heels, and her sky blue tennis shoes) without tipping over.

“And you work for the United States government,” replied Molly.

Mr. Mason’s engaging grin was wiped from his face for a moment, and then he re-attached it. “Why, what makes you say that, little girl?” he asked very nicely.

Molly looked at her mom first but her mom simply gave her the shrug she always gave when Molly was making an observation that startled an adult. They always assumed a girl of her size, age, and cuteness wouldn’t be so insightful or bold.

“Well,” started Molly carefully, “your shoes. First off, they’re really polished. Only people in the military do that. Second, the pin on your tie, it’s a pin that is the insignia of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services.”

Mr. Major’s frozen smile seemed to get more and more defrosted in embarrassment the longer she went on, but he remained cordial. “Well, that’s an interesting guess, little lady, but in truth the fact is I’m simply a professor who teaches English. And studies Russian. A college in Vladivostok has hired me.”

“But your pin,” Molly protested, sure of herself.

“Bought at a thrift shop, “ said Mr. Major, almost tersely. “Came with the tie.”

Molly shrugged at that. “Well, anyway, it’s now called the CIA. But in World War Two it was responsible for breaking Nazi codes and stuff. Did you ever fight in World War Two?”

By then they had been edging along as they talked and were now at the top of the stairs, so their conversation was interrupted by the stewardess who checked Molly’s ticket and ushered mother and daughter into the maw of the airplane.

Matt’s dad cocked his head again like a dog and gave a shrug to his son. He noticed that Matt seemed to be looking at his dad in a new light. Specifically, he was looking at the gold pin attached to his father’s tie in the shape of a spearhead which the girl had just pointed out. Matt had seen it a hundred times but he had never heard anything about World War Two other than his dad saying that the old man had been studying language in college during the war and was sometimes asked to translate some things.

Other than that, it struck him suddenly that he knew very little of what his dad did for a living.

He knew his father was no war hero, that was for sure, but beyond that he mostly just worked in an office somewhere, from what he had been able to gather. Like a librarian, maybe. In fact, as far as Matt could ever remember, his father was a big boring guy in oversized glasses who poured over books all day.

A person less sensitive to how words sometimes hurt others might even have called his father meek, or a milquetoast.

Matt reflected on that for a second before easing himself through the airplane doors, the portico which welcomed him and would soon usher him on to his first big international adventure with Molly.

* * *

Naturally, comments and observations, advice and criticism is welcome. Since this is a work in progress, I’m eager to know if the tone is hitting readers’ ears right, and if the descriptions are overwrought, etc. Feel free to leave comments in the comments section or throw your impressions out there for me to chew on.

P.S. Thanks to all you who have already subscribed! I’m happy that you’ve taken an interest, and I cherish and am grateful for your support.

For those of you who haven’t subscribed yet, please do it now. Don’t delay. Operators are standing by. Also, invite your friends to subscribe to my SlumpSack as well! If you’re going to suffer, why not have some company in the same wretched boat? Thanks

After all, look at it this way— one day you’ll be able to proudly say, “I was there at the very beginning, when what eventually became a world-wide juggernaut was in its infancy! And I gave him valuable advice on how to polish the rough-cut diamond of his storytelling. It was advice that he didn’t take, but at least I was asked to give it to him!” Or something like that, as you do, or as you will do, when you do that voodoo you do so well.

So I look forward to your comments about this story in the comment section below. Merci!

Let me confess— I’m doing this because my daughter said she enjoyed reading the famous book that basically trebucheted ol’ Pinche’s career into the mesosphere. Plus, Laurie Anderson wrote a song about it. So I guess I’m obligated to read it and blog about the experience occasionally here on ScoobySnack. What’s not to like?

Ok, almost everything, but nevermind. I’ll make it worth your while, I swear. We are going to achieve liftoff even if I have to pull out every single arrowspace pun in my quivering to get this rustbucket into orbit.

After all, the litter-oughtie here on ScudScrap are just dying to read about reading, right?

Of course, the exercise puts me in mind of that joke from the first Knives Out— the one about Gravity’s Rainbow being a book that people “have heard about but never read”. So why not defy spacetime itself by giving this monster a little moonshot myself?

Plus, I’ve got to churn out content that no one will ever read, too, so why not pretend this is a profitable venture of victorious indenture-tude? Indeed, milk it and produce a bit o’ butter about reading a book about “finishing” that no one ever finishes.

I could do this all day, emission control.

What’s more, I’m going to emulate Pynchon’s irascible style while I do it, so you better buckle yourself into the command module pleather seat of your choice pretty tight, ok space cowboy? There could be some turbulence.

Mittout further ado (ok, with a little more ado, this aside being part of an ado right now in a meta kind of a way), let’s flick our bickering and get this rocket ignited right.

I’ll start with the obvious snigger-inducing joke of the first chapter: bananas are phallic. Read: war is toxic masculinity, nevermind the tendency of nature to prefer le least piece de résistance.

Ok, so— got it. Apparently, when an author gets a hard-on and wants a satisfying stroke of... self-actualization, they sit down at the typewriter and bang out a tome populated with elongated shapes to assuage their guild. Yep, nose-cone blown.

Let’s launch the conceit right: rockets are expressions of male libido, the explosion of ecstatic combustion demise dreams and penetrative desires for environment domination. It’s embedded deep in the bed(rock) of the unconscious ID, as we all know. This libid thrust and erotic abnegation, just like the curvature of what goes up (erection) must come down (abjection), paradoxically expresses the death wish in its sext wish. Ergo, a book’s narrative bend can be expressed in terms of that calculus too (just like his-story?)

This is, so far, the main conceit of Pynchon’s nearly purplish prose, as far as I gather.

Point being: The physics of projectile trajectories trace the arc of a metaphor for the rise and fall infantilized civilization and its disconnects. Incumming mess age: You Got Male. So far so zehr gut. Now, do I have to read the whole book?

Perhaps the reason omniscient authors obsfucate the venial sins of their personal lust behind a scrim of arched eyebros and disdain for the follies of humanity is that they feel guilty enough about the satisfaction and shame of their own sex drive to find it repulsive? The mind-body dual-lissom, to be sure. The little death siren sings and stings simultaneously, seducing and then repulsing. Result: embarrassed men, all naked before the world, begging it to take their hard-on seriously when it’s a cosmic slip-on-a-banana joke.

And so you, all you authors Der Weiner and snitch, get ham-fisted too. Overweener-ing ala Pinchie who has a Pinch-on for performative literary erections. Just like Nazis.

It’s a primal disgust, the nausea of semen who refuse to return to dock their cocks in the port and instead stay at salty sea far too long, say 700 pages. Thus we see them eventually give birth to a book in the shadow of post-nut clarity, an expelling of energy without real comfort. What a come-down.

On the way to proving they’re above it all, such authors will mentally masturbate us all into the cumsock of a literary catch-22: anyone sane enough to not want to read this book must go on the mission after all, because they’re not truly crazy and incompetent enough to be spared the task.

In other words, you’ll want the satisfaction of proving you can pump this tome to completion, like it or not. So here I am. Ruin em? I rectum.

Similar to The Goldbug Variations, the metaphor of the material world --reduced to the science of it all, embossed with metaphorical transubstantiation of wasser into whine-- applies well to human wants, the wanton death wish. Make lov by inserting tab A into slot B, as the MANual deTAILs.

But the problem with such books is that the high-concept is more of a conceit than a satisfying reach-around for their literary partner, the reader. That’s because the authors of both above-mentioned books are so screwed tightly to their intellect that they dissect every situation with the scalpel of their equidistant bemusement, unto abstraction. (U know, same as me).

Hence in the first chapter of Pin, we are told that a knife is “isosceles” as if that was anything other than literary “pick me” shtick. And: a sign stolen from a bar (“in intaglo” or art that sticks out) is tagged the Snipe and Shaft.

Hell, that’s a perfect description of this book in three words.

It makes we want to say, “will someone just lay down with this wit and get him to stop talking so much already?”

The long-winded prose, all thrust and parry, seems like a lot of banging and less than caressive. The style is full-time smirk and smug satisfaction about how cartoonish the characters can be created and how erudite they can be to the chagrin of 1960s college kids, I think. It’s adept, but it wears out its welcome pretty thickly unless you’re on board the SS Thom from the start because you like things that drip condensation or condescension. (Just like this little screed, I think).

A little gimlet eye is wonderful, and all authors are arch when it comes down to it, especially if they’re trying to get chicks by appearing to be an observenting alpha rising above the planters of the apes, sure. But when you layer on the condoms so thick that the latex girth becomes its own reason to exist, you’ve lost the greater idea that the experience should be pleasurable for her too, not a literary cliterectomy taking place in the surgical gallery for the bemusement of the white coats lolling behind the viewing glass.

To understand is to kill, sure. Pynchon knows this. So where does that leave the reader? Helplessly flayed or splayed or pinned and wriggling to the corkboard of the writer’s desire to prove their encyclopedia of knowledge is limitless, pump after dry pump.

Writers like this (and me) make their narrators an encyclops-like god, peering down on mere mortals so sardonically that we wonder: why create what is destined to merely be disdained? It leaves us a little deserted when the lubrication of tears, desire, and surges of warm blood should surely engorge or at least oil up the penetrating insights thrust on us.

This writerly tone, then would be much better as a short story instead of a novel. A little can go a long way.

That’s a lot of fancy word-play to say: it was a bit tiresome to read. Rewarding though it may be, the onanistic prose seems so self-satisfied that even saytrs would take pause, put down the tome, and count the hours yet to go.

I mean, it’s amusing and all, I suppose. Cynical and highfalutin vulgar in that Confederacy of Dunces kind of a way, where the bone-desiccated wit of superior salami gets hidden in the folds and chambers of unending vulvious linguistic obfuscation.

But the punchline is mostly: first a view from the butcher shop at a perspective of 1000 feet above the ground, satellite height, then… quick close-ups of reeking meat. High high, low. Got it, slappy.

Basically, we don’t care about these people. It’s literary math, abstracted and compacted to prove the author’s incellious autism is sellable to their peers in prurient academia, done for approval. So is the author exempt of the dynamic he criticizes and clitifies? Seems not. Maybe. It’s still early.

I dunno, I guess that I have to keep reading it until I get to the sophomoric sex limericks and finally scratch the itch. After all, I promised I would, if at least to learn ein bissen physics or fizziks uber alles.

But I’m probably going to have to have a stroke of my own genius or two to get through it and wind up feeling satisfied. Right? At least it’s sex with someone I love, as the Wood once observed. You know how it is-- tender is the knight.

So, combust those thrusters, tin pushers, it’s time for some fireworks by the 4th of Julio. After all, Word War is on the cusp again, too, I hear. Bombs await for now or until the world ends and the whole enterprise tumbles back to crumbs and dust. Whichever comes first.

- - -

So, this here, down in the dregs, is where I ask you to subscribe and beg you for money or whatever, hat in hand, and gland-handed. Heed this, oh demandarins of Shtupslack! Or something.

Natcherly, here’s my value proposition: you’ll get the finest in slightly scuffed, pre-owned but still like new udderings from this here ol’ cow which normally you won’t buy cause you get the malk for free, and I’ll keep churning it out like it madders.

More to the point— I figure every week you’ll get:
—one bit of music criticism (music mondays)
—one poem (Thor’s day, full of enlightningment)
—One guaranteed guffaw or chortle-piece a week from the irascible ire-labs and satire socerers of Extabland (as perscribed by doctors, according to the WHO, those poltroons).
It can’t be beat with a shtick!

Plus, if you subscribe today, you get free bonus enticements, including:

—two free books from the Extablisment unstable stable of authors who live in the stables out back our offices, plus

—three to five free downloads of fine music products as well.
Soowee, that’s some deal!

Honestly, it’s an offer than can’t be beat at any price, mostly because I tried to price it lower but Substack wouldn’t let me. So we’re already rock bottom dollar. Indeed, as Saran Pale-Inn once pronounced, “you betcha!”

Subscribe today, suckers!

Here is my analysis of ten new

sauce profiles, to wit-- tart, essences

of fruit flavor, insouicant mouths,

tongues salacious, and several

fascinating lingual papillae profiles.

In brief: Slanting bananas, smile-long,

lust-crusted mangoes, rose

apples, sweet shy tamarind,

dark-night soy and sun-bright

ponzu from J…

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These days people want moving pictures not words. This is the modern way-- an illuminated screen skyscraper-large to bombard the psyche. Understanding the world through movies (or TV or videos) is easier than reading; it’s comforting as well, like a mother that happily slips a bottle of milk into a baby’s mouth to shush it. Our eyes suck and imbibe; we feel all is well.

Vittorio Reggianini, The Reading

Certainly, and why wouldn’t we? Zipping by at 30 frames per second, life can be captured in all its seeming four-dimensional glory in a way that often narrows and numbs with the certainty of plain fact. Observable, obvious. Yet that means film is generally a passive experience. Such moments may be powerful and they may ripple the surface some, but they might never threaten to expand deeply and outward like waves into a sea of uncertain infinity, roiled by dangerous uncontrollable undulating reverberations, the way a book can in your mind.

With movies, you are there, no thoughtful interpretation required. You don’t really participate in the creation of meaning. There’s very little nuance that you work to uncover, scant chance to witness subtle insights expanding inky unknown of infinite experience, as deep as you can see. There’s only what you are shown to be, at the expense of greater thrilling mystery. Video shows you mere shadow puppets upon the cave wall, blasted with blinding lights that too easily hypnotize. You comply with their insistence that all will be revealed and made observable, obvious. What is unknown or misunderstood can just be discarded. Close-ups direct your attention, the actors communicate feelings with twitches of their made-up faces, a story rises and falls like the rush of a roller coaster, the universe is easily apprehended. It’s merely comfort at a safe distance.

There’s one thing movies can’t really do that reading and writing can: be two or three or four things at once. Take the intro quote at the beginning of this article. What does it mean to “pepper” questions? Would a filmmaker show people throwing kernels of black Sichuan peppercorn at the man? No, of course not. Its fully metaphorical in several ways at once, synesthetic. We suspect the questions are hot, coming fast, shook out like a chef might do it. You don’t need to picture the peppers, though you might picture the train platform and the urgent people waiting on it. Instead, each reader may see the pepper in their mind’s eye a little differently and connect it to a concept of how people urgently act.

Amazingly, through the miracle of reading, you can easily imagine your own private train station, for sure, without even a hint of real description. It is conjured with very little more than a few suggestions. We may wonder: are the questions asked of the man in the quote above like a sprinkled condiment, shaken with force to conjure a verbal spray of dust in the air, or are they spicy on the asker’s tongue? Do they spit hot and pungent from the mouths of the passengers? Would a filmmaker show flames emanating off their lips as such? With film, there’s only a handful of basic interpretations for a scene. In literature, there’s an infinite number, as many are there are readers to read. There’s the music of the words, and the images, and the metaphors, and the literal interpretation, plus the moral implications of the themes and ideas. Amazing.

When the crowd condensed on the platform, were they merely water in the air? Is the metaphor of time as a river something that can truly thaw? When we are frozen in time, as in a film that freezes a frame, how can it also melt into liquid? And yet time flows-- there’s a fractal of meanings that dizzy the mind all the time when you read. It’s a buzz. Perhaps the people are enlivened enough to extend their blood-pumping limbs as if the train tracks were a network of nerves and blood vessels after surging with hope after feeling paralyzed by the delay? Yes, all of those things at once.

And what of the music of the words? A thread of melody is woven in every word, a beatific cadence that plods or dances or marches forth while communicating the energy of the moment. The sound echoes the sense, as they say.

Then witness the flow of fresh water, sense the repeated F sounds pushing your tongue forward too. Then there’s images-- flashes of places, the recollection of other memories that burst and bloom in the brain, forged into a gleaming new glass bauble in your mind when you read. Imagination. Did you know that when you read the word “red apple” on paper, the same place where vision is processed in your brain activates, just as if you were really seeing something red? It’s true, so why don’t you become your own filmmaker too?

This is what literature affords. Only literature multiplies and echoes and cascades in the mind unlike any other artform, reverberating. As Hofstadter put it, it’s a “strange loop”: mirrors facing mirror, bouncing photons back and forth to near infinity. We think, we reflect, then we reflect on our reflection. We read, we sense, we imagine, we incubate meaning, we understand multiple truths at once. The movies have their simpering soundtracks, their swelling strings, but the emotion is fixed and most often unambiguous. (A movie studio does not want to challenge viewers, they want to put butts in seats and make their multimillion dollar investment back). A film most often crassly insists instead of suggesting and letting the silence in the reader’s mind do some of the orchestration.

Why would a train sigh or cough? Clearly it’s sick; we guess this is the reason for the delay at the station. Those sounds might be captured by a movie’s foley people hired by the director to pipe stock sounds in over the loud-speakers. Maybe there might even be a deliberately suggestive wheezing noise on the soundtrack. But unless the audience wanted to do the transformative work of equating the steam sound to some human personification, it would probably go unnoticed.

In literature, we float in a universe of simultaneous expanding fractalized connections, the warp and wow echoing in the ears, punning, multiplying, irradiating the mind to electric life, electrons excited and energized. All these concepts can play and mate; they take us from the head of a pin to the head of a corporation to the heady spin of the galactic creator at will, can’t they? (Just picture that happening in a movie). Literature is all-encompassing, all powerful, the one most divine fire humans can touch. Feel it burn your brain, sear your flesh with the most dangerous experiences imaginable, all in refractive multiplicity.

Vittorio Reggianini, 1800s Italian painter

And then: there’s the writer’s sudden juxtaposition of the eternal question of how to endure life’s ongoing suffering-- what does that tell us about the train’s passengers? Maybe they fret and worry with an abstract and unanswerable moral imperative to survive, pushed onward somewhat unwillingly the same way our lives are, an unceasing struggle in which we swim, trying to keep our heads up, taking gulps of breath, and yet invigorated by it, because swimming is a fun challenge. Consider how that the quote’s final non-sequitur about life’s challenges transforms the scene as well. Everyone’s had to wait patiently for a train before, right? Imagine the tense patience, the bottled frustration. It reminds us that the emotional stake in even the most mundane place is always: I might die! An abrupt juxtaposition does its work masterfully in order to whip up in us the same high blood-pressure anxiety the passengers must feel. Voila, empathy.

Sure, film can do that too, but sometimes not as richly since audiences generally expect sequential narrative. Readers, on the other hand, can be a little more tolerant of diversions or digressions-- they can see the page at once and understand that any idea will eventually leave the station and move on towards its next destination: life, profundity, collisions of feeling and thought. The end of a paragraph, a moment to put your bags down and rest. So, readers often appreciate the multi-dimensional world a little better, tolerate ambiguity better, and grow their own brain’s neurons and focus skills at the same time when they read. And going back to re-read, to check and recalibrate can be done at an instant, too.

Surely, then, any type of literature that doesn’t threaten you with an untimely demise, or remind you of the precious, precocious, unique moments of truth and amazement and mystery in which you float, or encourage you to empathize, is not true literature. It’s just mere entertainment. Yes, reading good writing is always worth an hour of distraction before the quotidian trains of our lives leave their stations once again, ferrying us off into our common times and busybody existences. Indeed, see how the passengers clutch their diamond necklace novels to their hearts as they board, ready to make the journey more bearable, meaningful, experientially rewarding. So…All aboard!

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Given all that, why not subscribe to my Substack today so that I’m able to indulge your taste for fine, explosive literary experiences? Subscribe today, or I might just die of malnutrition. Your redoubtable generosity as a patron of the arts will resonate through the ages and into the infinite universe. Surely it’s worth a few bucks a month. So, here’s my value proposition: subscribes will receive five free bonus music albums from the extablisment stable of musicians, and also a paperback copy of our newest published novel Salvation Road. That’s a $50 dollar value right there! Of course, you’ll also see me publish 5 articles on Substack a month, a have the chance to get involved with my other readers during discussions and online lessons on the topics du jour. Whatta bargain! Subscribe today, please.

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