My Attempt

I have often found myself wondering around on off topic thoughts while reading a book, and before I am aware of it I am already about two pages ahead and I have no idea what I have read. Un willingly I have to back, and while I do so I realize that absolutely every sentence in the book is key, every sentence has a purpose and if I skip it I lose the essence that the author wanted to cause on me. It is interesting, every sentence of books of 150 pages to 500 pages or more, has, obviously, a reason why they were placed there. What that agnorisis of mine has to do with Gary Lutz, The Sentence Is A Lonely Place is that he made me see another reason for not only the sentence but the words that every writer chooses for their sentences.

I never found myself on wondering off thoughts while reading this essay in the first place. I really, thoroughly enjoyed, indeed, every sentence of it. My respects to Lutz. This essay is by far, the most pleasant to read. As I read, he made me change the way I was reading. From the opening sentence the words caught my unconditional attention. All the way till the end I asked to myself repeatedly what was it that made this writing so good, why was I enjoying this much more than the Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow? I guess that the content of what was being written could be applied, or is forced to be applied while one is reading.

“I came to language only late and only peculiarly.” In this nine-word opening sentence there are about six things that I could talk about. I read it the first time and I was driven to highlight it and reread it again four times. He talks about language as if it were a person, or a place. He does this all along the essay, “-this inkling that a word is a solid, something firm and palpable.” He uses the word only twice, and for two very different adjectives: he uses late first, when I should, or could be better placed last, and peculiarly last. To describe how he came into language and maybe to explain why he used late first and not last curiously (this is my attempt to analyze his words choices). Why only late? Why only peculiarly? Why not late and peculiarly? The word only definitely adds style to the sentence, without it, it would be an ordinary sentence.

The Sentence Is A Lonely Place is an exemplary analytic essay. For next assigned essay I will use this as a rubric. Lutz’s structure goes like this:

The introduction is an anecdote of his early life, obviously using hyperbole and figurative language, “…the release of words were the least significant of the mouth’s activities-…” I don’t know how true is the description of how language came into his life but it is interesting.

Lutz then talks about language itself, the feeling of it, his point of view of words and how much they mean to him, the way other authors use it and the way he himself uses them. He says, “…the aim of the literary artist, I believe, is to initiate the process by which the words in a sentence no longer remain strangers to each other but begin to acknowledge one another’s existence…” He talks about his relationship with words and words relationship with another words as if he were talking about a couple that were dating! Even though he is talking about a potentially boring topic he manages to make it as thrilling as an action movie.

The body of the essay is his close reading on sentences from authors like, Christine Shutt, Gordon Lish, Diane Williams, Sam Lipsyte, among others. He does very deep analysis. I knew that the letters in the words that made up a sentence could have an effect on its meaning. But I was not aware that the sound and shape and even symbolic meaning of the letters had such an impact. Lutz’s analysis could be applied to his writing, “A book was, for me, an acquisitive thing, absorbing, accepting, taking invitation to practice hygiene over it- ….” Lutz uses the vowel a to start the three adjectives that he chose to describe what a book was for him. I believe that is called alliteration, but I’m not so good at analyzing so profoundly. Lutz does this from pages 6 to 12 of the 13-page-essay. And again, I am going to use it as a guide for my own close reading.

And finally he concludes with a sentence that wraps almost the whole essay, “Psychiatrists use the term weak central coherence to pinpoint the difficulty of certain autistic persons to get the big central picture, to see the forest instead of the trees.” He is calling himself a person that indeed, has a weak central coherence, because he sees the words, (even the letters) instead of the story.

"What Is It About?"

During my weekend I was asked about the book that I was reading, and this was my dialogue:

Silvia (a friend of mine) looked at my book and asked, “What are you reading?”
I stopped reading and I told her, “It is an assignment for my english class, The Crying Of Lot 49”
She was as confused as before, so she asked me, “What is it about?”
I looked at the book, and I realized that is was 15 pages away from finishing it and I still didn’t really know what was it about… I was blank. I said, “I’m not sure, it is a bunch of inside jokes making fun of things”
Silvia looked puzzled and kept on asking me, “But… what is the author making fun of?” And I was blank again! I felt so stupid, I had been reading a book for about two weeks and I really didn’t know what it was about. So I told her, “Things like, the society, the commercialists, the ordinary things that are daily but stupid.” Still not clear she asked me, “But… why is it called The Crying of Lot 47? What does that mean?” That, I actually had no clue, “I don’t have a clue” I think she surrendered asking me about the book, so she simply kept on reading her magazine about fashion.

I kept on thinking, The Crying Of Lot 49 is just a book that describes, it doesn’t explain anything. There is no way to answer what the book is about. The novel, if it can really be called a novel, is about nothing! I think that the story of Oedipa and the death of Pierce is just an excuse to write about nonsense, just make fun of life. The none significance of life.

“But like the thought that someday she would have to die, Oedipa had been steadfastly refusing to look at that possibility directly, or in any but the most accidental of lights. “No,” she said, “that’s ridiculous.’” (pg.138) This quote, kind of says it all. If she was going to die someday then, why bother to care about ANYTHING that she had been bothering about?!

In a hypothetical case that Silvia asked me again, “What is the book about?” I would answer, “Nothing”

So Yeah... Whatever

I was able to connect the book with what has been out Topic all week: Signifying Nothing.

It is very weird the themes that this book has, if it is read ad a real novel, taking it seriously it will never make any sense, and even if it is read as metaphorically and understanding the message that Pynchon is trying to get trough his lines, it still doesn’t make any sense. Pynchon said that for his books, “Stories much more focused on a single theme usually; novels full of many themes.” (link)
That is exactly what this story is:

The cheating on Mucho with Metzger, the play Courier’s Tragedy, The Trystero, the horns, the sign that looks a little like a key, the Thurns and Taxis, Hilarious (a shrink gone mad), LSD, Pierce’s death, Oedipa’s confusion, The Paranoids, “… etc.” (pg.27)

But, it all actually means nothing. It is fictional, of curse, it is not historical, it is not scientific, it is simply, nothing.

And like in Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5,
“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Pynchon says,
“the stored, coded years of uselessness, early death, self-harrowing, the sure decay of hope, the set of all men who had slept on it, whatever theirs lives had been, would truly cease to be, forever, when the mattress burned.” (pg. 104)

So, it doesn’t matter if I what I write about is write or wrong, or if Oedipa finally deciphers the million mysteries, because as Macbeth did, Oedipa and I are going to die.

Glorifying Nothing

I found the Hymn of Yoyodyne so interesting that I will dedicate this blog to it (pg 65):

High above the L.A freeways,
And the traffic’s whine,
Stands the well-known Galactronics
Branch of Yoyodyne.
To the end, we swear undying
Loyalty to you,
Pink pavilions bravely shining,
Palm trees tall and true.

What more ridiculous could it be? A hymn for a company of stockholders! And yet, the most amazing thing is that I believe that there are actual companies that DO have a hymn. Wikipedia says that a hymn is “a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer,” it is usually to a divine or holly figure or a personification of it. But Pynchon is using the symbol of a hymn for a company and obviously magnifying the importance of it. We know of countries that have hymns and they are composed of historical events and important historical people of the country. This hymn talks about a company, but not the code of honor, not the ethic of work, but the traffic and “pink pavilions”. Its glorifying a stockholding company, and making big and important the actually insignificant and material things. For example, “Palm trees tall and true” it is written as if it was so profound and meaningful, but they are actually palm trees! Or “High above the L.A freeways,” its describing a freeway! Not a battle of independence or the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a funny hymn, and pathetic.

It Is Funny

I got a better sense of the funny parts of the book in chapter 3, here are some of them:

“Fallopian twinkled. ‘They accuse us of being paranoids.’” (pg.35)
1. The name Fallopian… WTF? I understand that Fallopian TUBES are part of the reproductive system of a female, the two ducts that connect the ovaries with the uterus, where usually the egg is fertilized. Not a name for a person, or the last name of a person.
2. What he says is being paranoid, it is ironic, if someone is paranoid he thinks that he is being followed or accused for or looked at. I read in a bumper sticker once something similar, it said, “I used to be a schizophrenic but now we are okey”. It’s funny.
A guy named Peter Pinguid Society was making a plan to bomb Cape Horn of San Francisco, and two cruisers were around that place and were supposedly going to attack and a squadron was standing there to protect and everything, but “The cruisers, however, seemed to prefer cruising and nothing more.” (pg. 35)
That’s exaggeration. The whole story is an exaggeration of something that wouldn’t happen. I mean cruises are not war weapons. It is making fun of the war, the exaggeration of sending a squadron to guard the city of two cruises.

Then there is this play about the killing of Niccolo and the murderer Angelo, that is a Tragedy, that is funny, like Candide. “At the end of it about the only character left alive in a stage dense with corpses is the colorless administrator, Genaro” (pg 58)
That is another exaggeration! And a funny one that all are dead, and just the administrator is alive.

So yes, it is a satirical play.

A Little Lost

I have never read a book like this one. Clockwork Orange is the most similar book that I have read, it is absurd and thing that have nothing to do with each other happen. I have the same feeling that I had while reading Clockwork Orange, I feel a little lost. I have paid a lot of attention reading the book but sometimes is loose track of what is happening and what Thomas Pynchon is trying to transmit. I know that it is a satire, which is trying to make fun of various things. I know that because in class we discussed it. So obviously I was attentive to the making fun of someone or something and ironies.

One I found was that Oedipa criticized the sign of the motel where she stayed, she thought that, “The face of the nymph was much like Oedipa’s, which didn’t startle her so much as a concealed blower system that kept the nymph’s gauze chiton in constant agitation, revealing enormous vermilion-tipped breasts and long pink thighs at each flap.” (pg.16) The nymph was at the sign of the “Echo Courts” motel. Pynchon is very straight forward, he is making a connection with a hooker and Oedipa. It actually becomes a foreshadow of what is to happen next. Indeed Oedipa is kind of like a hooker, she cheats on her husband, with Metzger, the lawyer. After only one night of flirting around and playing around and, “She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she’d come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera’s already moving.” Oedipa was actually the one that started sex, Metzger was asleep, and she “began kissing him to wake him up.” (pg.29) she becomes the nymph of the sign, the sign that had not surprised her, because it was herself.

WEIRD

This is the perfect example of absurdity. This is a very random story. I cannot find the connections between the different events. Oedipa jumps from getting a letter, to wanting to escape, to being Rapuntzel and back and forth. While I was reading I was trying to find solutions to what was happening. In no real story things like that happen, so there most be some kind of other meaning behind it, obviously. I came to the conclusion that Oedipa is either more than one person, or she is mentally sick, as she herself suspects.

Either way, I think that I need to read more to get a broader idea. For now, The Crying of Lot 49 looks interesting.