The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
In my last post, I went on too long about Pynchon's short novel, although I hope the reasons why are clearer when I finally get to McCarthy. Whether they are or not remains to be seen, but regardless, I wanted to move on to David Foster Wallace, or DFW to his fans.
I've read quite a bit more of Wallace than Pynchon - not only Infinite Jest, but also Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and the two non-fiction collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - and it was my aggregate impression of Wallace's work of which I was reminded while I read Lot 49. Much of the similarity lies in the way the two men write - both are wordsmiths, crafting complex, challenging prose that effortlessly references classical literature as well as pop culture; and both favor absurdist situations for their characters as a way of promoting life as a series of meaningless events. However, what truly links these two in my mind is the feeling that both of them write as if they have already figured things out, and that their major works are obscure and entertaining puzzles - puzzles that, if decoded, hint at the true nature of the world. (As an added bonus, once the reader accepts this general drift, there is a tendency to feel as if he is now in the know, and parted from ordinary saps. Defending this exalted feeling may explain the nature of some of these author's rabid fans, or their defensive posture.) Unraveled, this worldview looks a bit glib and charmless to me, but when I look around, the world does look a bit glib and charmless.I'm tempted to call Wallace the better writer, although that opinion is premature for several reasons - mainly in that I haven't read enough of Pynchon to accurately judge. But another reason is that Pynchon was writing in response to an America shaking off the 1950's, and Lot 49 assists in breaking down that old order. Wallace comes along after all the idols have been pulled down - in fact, the available icons he had to choose from in our time were once the rabble rousers - and writes from amid the rubble. It seems to me that, given such a situation, one of three things are possible - either you begin to re-build, hopefully better this time; you can lie amongst the rubble, satisfied; or else, as Wallace does with Infinite Jest, you can go looking for large chunks passed over by your authorial forefathers and smash them into smaller chunks. Where Pynchon attacks ways of thinking about society, Wallace attacks ways of thinking about the literature that attacks society.
Bluntly, I'll say that both Pynchon and Wallace do what they do very well. There is writing within Infinite Jest that is simply stunning, and the passages concerning the addict Don Gately may be the best sample of writing that I've ever read. But does this literature edify or demolish? Should it? Knowing what we know, what sort of literature would be reconstructive?
Next, Cormac McCarthyism, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Blood Meridian.
