Month: March 2018

Much as I admire Pynchon, I have to say that I am really enjoying the sensation of leaving him behind and drifting into the world of Terry Southern. Not that Southern’s world is completely different from Pynchon’s, but it is a lot simpler and easier to deal with. On the first page of Blue Movie we are at a Hollywood party where a producer named Sid Krassman is telling a joke about a frustrated starlet. The punchline has the starlet asking desperately “Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?” Pynchon could almost have created this scene. But Pynchon would have sandwiched it between a couple of far more abstruse passages and somehow given the whole package a mysterious depth as if the joke were being told atop a thin and fragile membrane above a bottomless cauldron of darkness and mystery. If you’d rather skip that part, you need Terry Southern.

Southern was a novelist, screenwriter, occasional teacher, and habitual methamphetamine user whose work wove in and out of a long list of 60’s and 70’s cultural phenomena. He worked on Easy Rider, Dr. Strangelove, Barbarella, Casino Royale, The Cincinnati Kid, and other films. He was a long-time friend of Peter Sellars and is said to have collaborated with Sellers on much of the dialog that Sellers added to the Pink Panther films. He wrote novels, short fiction and magazine articles and Tom Wolfe credits him for having invented new journalism with his 1962 Esquire article “Twirling at Ole Miss.” He even worked for a while for Saturday Night Live–though not during its best years or his.

Terry Southern may be remembered more for his screenwriting than for his fiction, but Blue Movie has always been a sentimental favorite of mine. The story begins when a very successful and jaded Hollywood director gets the idea of making the ultimate high-class porn movie–with well-known actors, highest quality production values, and no limits on what could be shown. Somewhat to his surprise, a producer–the aforementioned Sid Krassman–finds a way to arrange some major financing for the project. What follows is often funny but seldom very subtle. The characters are depthless caricatures bordering on stereotypes. Some of the explicit sex scenes are charming in their way but some others just go on and on in obsessive detail. (I can’t help speculating that meth use might account for some of that.) The result is a book that is embarrassing even to own. I probably got rid of my first copy partly for that reason.

Why then, when I saw it in Powell’s in the late 90’s, did I buy another one? And why is it still with me, having survived the great purge? I don’t know. Possibly because Southern is brilliantly hilarious in short bursts and, overall, the satire is so unflinching and so accurate. And in fact, Blue Movie only seems to be about sex. It’s more about depicting Hollywood culture, which Southern sees as an amalgam of sexism, racism, vulgarity, venality, and monstrous ego. When it was published in 1970, it seems that few of us were really listening. As a broader culture, did we think Southern was just kidding? Did we not want to know or did we not really care? Probably all three played a part. When I bought a new edition of Blue Movie at Powell’s in the 90’s, it was as if its message had been completely forgotten. Beginning with a dedication to “the great Stanley K.” and featuring an opening quote from T. S. Eliot, it was a 70’s curiosity that came with a garish new 90’s cover, and it was published by Grove Press, which was itself a famous name long past its glory days. A sentimental choice indeed.

So what about these days? Well, Southern’s novels are hardly well known, but in the last few years, the racist and sexist aspects of Hollywood have certainly got some widespread attention. So that’s a kind of vindication for him. As for venality, vulgarity and ego, those may hang on a little longer; they’re generally doing well in many parts of the country. Which reminds me that whatever you think of Donald Trump, one thing is certain. If he were a character in a Terry Southern novel, he’d fit right in.

The first Pynchon book that I read was V.  I still remember how enthralled I was with its exotic locations and explosion of ideas. What a wonderful book it was for a young man who was just starting to explore the world! I quickly sought out The Crying of Lot 49 and then Gravity’s Rainbow. A few years later I read all three of those again. Then Vineland. Then Mason & Dixon. Then Inherent Vice. Then Mason & Dixon again.

That’s a lot of Pynchon work, and as you may know, Pynchon work is hard. The novels are usually long and there are dozens of characters. The language is densely imagistic. The characters and their experiences are exotic; the stories are intense, filled with foreboding, danger and suspense. And though each story has conflict and narrative drive, the novel jumps from one semi self-contained episode to the next. Once one scene ends, the novel shifts to another, one with a different focus, set in a different time and place, possibly with a wildly different tone. They all seem to be related–very much so–but the relations are unclear and shifting. It’s hard to keep track.

But that’s because there is no track, or rather, there is and there isn’t. When a new episode begins, introducing an almost entirely new character with a new set of problems beginning in a time six years before the episode you just finished, it can be frustrating. You might ask “Why do I have to wade though this? What about my favorite character? What about the main story?” For example, at around page 400 of Gravity’s Rainbow Pynchon begins a 40-page section about a character named Franz Pokler, someone the reader hasn’t really met before and perhaps won’t ever see much of again. So, I’m thinking, “Oh god, here’s yet another digression. It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. I can’t stand it.” But the thing is, if you push ahead, you find out that Franz Pokler’s story is fascinating. Is it connected to other parts of the novel? Yes, but does that connection constitute it’s real importance? Not for Franz. For Franz, his story matters most. At this point in the novel, at this moment of reading, it becomes that way for the reader as well.

And as if the density and the discontinuity weren‘t enough, Pynchon occasionally interjects passages of closely described natural scenes that evoke strong emotional states but which make little reference to any characters at all. Are these hard to plow through? Oh yeah. On the other hand, Pynchon also throws some wild parties, filled with slap-stick drama, hair’s breadth escapes and trenchant dialog. Gravity’s Rainbow, especially, just explodes with voices.

In some novels it makes sense to speak of character development, to think about how a character’s complexity is revealed as the story progresses. The main protagonist in Gravity’s Rainbow, the person we are most likely to identify with, is Tyrone Slothrop. We hear a lot about him and we spend a lot of time seeing things from his point of view. We can’t help hoping that somehow things will come out well for him. But alas! Gravity’s Rainbow is actually a 760-page exegesis of how it is that Tyrone comes to be less and less present, less and less real. Tyrone gradually becomes a nebulous mist and fades away. Some readers might find that frustrating at first. I know I did. But then I came to understand it. Becoming less and less real is all any of us do, really. It’s kind of tragic, but also it’s hilarious.

I don’t often remember particular lines or passages from the books I read. But from Gravity’s Rainbow there are two things that have stayed with me from the very first reading. The first one is this:

Personal density is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth.

I take this to mean that the more you remember your past and the more you foresee of your future, the more substantial you are. We hear a lot about learning to live in the now, that all the rest is illusion and distraction. The suggestion is that living in the now is the pure essence of being. Pynchon reminds us, though, that purity is transparent. If you achieve it, there’s really no you there anymore. (Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.)

And then there’s this, which has been one of my prime operating principles ever since I first read it all those years ago:

Q: Then what about all the others? Boston? London? The ones who live in cities. Are those people real, or what?

A: Some are real, and some aren’t.

Q: Well are the real ones necessary? or unnecessary?

A: It depends on what you have in mind.

Q: Shit, I don’t have anything in mind.

A: We do.

One reason I like this is that I’m pretty sure I don’t ultimately have anything in mind. In one sense, that’s my trouble.