Monday, July 28, 2008

He gazed at Reef in almost unconcealed envy, failing completely to recognize the darker thing, the desire, the desperate need to create a radius of annihilation that, if it could not include the ones who deserved it, might as well include himself.

- Against the Day, page 95

I mean, come on. That's great. That's a great sentence. There's moments like this all over the place, these moments I've come to think of as payout moments or payoff moments, sentences and paragraphs and even just phrases that are so self-contained and dynamic that they almost transcend the need to be organized within any kind of narrative arc. Though don't get me wrong--I'm loving the narrative arc. Arcs. It's a ride, and I am on it, and I am thrilled.

This is language chugging in top gear, a language of (if I may) "critical excess;" it's like Pynchon is taking the modern-day writer's maxim of "Use as few words as possible" or "Use only the words that are absolutely necessary" and he's showing how so many words can be so necessary all at once, even in such great quantities. Look in the middle there for an example: "the darker thing, the desire, the desperate need"--you could cut any two of those "d" words out and trim this sentence up in keeping with the aforementioned credo, but then you'd have a sentence with a fraction of the poetry and impact. (Of course, your sentence, if it's anything like my sentence--pick a recent sentence, any recent sentence--would probably suck in comparison anyways, so-o-o-o.)

I've heard-tell this book is messy and the subplots weigh it down and it doesn't "resolve," that it does too much or not enough of the right thing, or whatever, but, here's the thing: true or false, none of that matters in the face of such brilliant, excited language. If he drops a tiny stick of dynamite like the one above every couple pages, I won't care what the final landscape looks like. Blowing it up will have been far too much fun.