Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
These three selections have the happy circumstance to all be listed on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and also that I've read them in the last year. With such a small sampling, all I can do is make some rather vague generalizations, yet because of their high profile in modern American lit, I don't think it's completely unfair to note some observations based on these three works alone.
Although my intention with these blog posts was primarily to note similarities and connections, in this case there will be comparison and contrast. On the comparative side, there is The Crying of Lot 49 and Infinite Jest, and it almost seems to me I can draw a genealogical straight line from one to the other. Both Pynchon and Wallace are technically brilliant (as is McCarthy), and both have a penchant for complex, convoluted prose and humor, which is showcased either as situational or as wordplay. Readers could also consider these two particular works mysteries - more so Lot 49 than Infinite Jest - but mysteries that are never conventionally resolved.
In The Crying of Lot 49, this mystery takes the shape of a vast conspiracy whose roots go back hundreds of years. It is easy for me to get sidetracked, to try and sort out the clues to solving the mystery, when I think Pynchon's intention all along was really aimed at illustrating the vague feeling one can have that sometimes life seems meaningless, and sometimes it seems as if hidden forces were directing the action from the shadows. By book's end, I also get the impression that Pynchon is saying that if there are controlling forces operating behind closed doors, they plan to stay that way, no matter what they have to do in order to sustain their anonymity.From a distance of forty-five years (and having not even been alive when it was published), it may be presuming a lot to think I can place Lot 49 within the context of its times. Regardless, my theory is that Pynchon wrapped up several prevailing ideas in a snappy hip package that wasn't only entertaining, but probably seemed to capture an intellectual mood as well. In the following quote, Tristero signifies the mysterious cabal that, according to the main character Oedipa Maas, may or may not exist, and may or may not exert an untold influence on society.
"For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America and if there was just America then it seemed the only way she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia."
These thoughts seem to dovetail quite nicely with the historical record of the subversive ideals that emerged in the late sixties/early seventies. (I'm not trying to suggest that Pynchon's work precipitated subversion, or that subversion was more than only a tiny part of that time - just that the text and ideas from Lot 49 appear indicative of that mindset from that period.) Dig it, man.
I've went on too long for a blog post - to be continued with A Brief Look at Contemporary American Literature part II, or Pynchon Begets Wallace.
