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Tori Amos performed solo on her early tours, just her and her piano, with occasional assistance from Steve Caton on guitar. I never saw her during those years, but I have watched the Live from New York video many times.
She is, of course, an incredible stage performer, but there are moments in that concert where she becomes, shall we say, a tiny bit self-indulgent. You can see her think, "Oooh, this is an interesting note. Maybe I should see how long I can hold it... and I bet I could get a real cool screechy effect right here, too."
I first saw her on the next tour, the first one with a full band, and there was none of that. You have a band, you have restrictions. You can't just decide to pause all of a sudden because it seems like a groovy idea (especially when you have a rhythm section like hers, which is not exactly nimble).
The interesting part is that I saw her quite a few times after that, mostly solo (I was always inclined more toward the solo tours, since you may have been able to discern my opinion of her rhythm section), and she never went back to the self-indulgent stuff that annoyed me before. Leading a band gave her discipline, and she's kept that discipline ever since.
I'm re-reading Vineland, the Thomas Pynchon novel that Inherent Vice is most often compared to. It's surprising what a mess it is. The things I disliked about it are pretty much as I remember them (I'll write more about this when I'm done), and there are some wonderful things that I'd forgotten. But it's very loose. You start out thinking it's going to be about Zoyd Wheeler, but then we wander off (as if the author starts to find Zoyd about as annoying as this reader did) following other characters, each one of whom gets a long backstory. I'm about two-thirds of the way through, and basically nothing has happened since the first chapter, just lots of history filled in.
Which is different from the Hitchcock example I mention in this post. In Family Plot, the story continues to move, just in a different direction than you expected. In Vineland, it pretty much stops.
Inherent Vice, on the other hand, is quite tight. There are flashbacks and backstory, but they're limited and focused; and the book generally moves forward, with things continuing to happen. Because for writers, genre restrictions are pretty much like getting a rhythm section. As Paul Anderson said in his commentary track for Resident Evil Extinction, "In a zombie picture, you can have a little romance, but then you have to get back to killing zombies." With a mystery, you have to line up your questions and start to answer them.
Which is what I've found, I guess. My first novel, A Sane Woman, is a mystery, and it's really short (it wasn't until I started laying it out in print that I realized how short it is – barely a novel at all by some measures).
U-town is not a mystery (though it contains one), and it is (shall we say) somewhat longer, and it does meander around quite a bit. Ditto the third novel, and an argument could be made that they are really just two halves of one novel (which would then be over 800 pages if printed).
But now I'm writing mysteries, and suddenly it's easy to be much more concise. Having a genre structure keeps things focused (assuming you're taking the genre seriously), and it also solves the problem that Robert Altman identified about "endings" (I quoted him here).
Where is the end of the story? How can you tell when it's over? Well, with a mystery, the story is over when the mystery is solved. That way, you don't end up like Michael Douglas's character in Wonder Boys, whose unfinished novel ends up well over 1,000 pages because he can't stop writing it.
I'm not saying, by the way, that all mysteries need to be solved. David Lynch, for example, frequently uses the form of a mystery, but he usually doesn't provide any answers. This often works really well (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, the first season of Twin Peaks). But he's just using the form, he's not really writing mysteries. Inherent Vice is the real thing (though it's obviously a lot more as well).
(On, and a couple of days ago I did an entry about Christy. You can scroll down to read it, or click on the link over to the right.)
February 8th, 2010
I was going to write that Inherent Vice has more gay people in it than any of Pynchon's earlier novels (with the usual caveat that I only made it 200 pages into Against the Day), but as I thought about it I realized that something much more interesting is going on.
There are really no "gay people" in Inherent Vice. What the book actually shows is a time and place when people didn't feel a need to declare their sexuality one way or the other (or another), when people felt free to experiment and do whatever they felt like at any given moment.
Spoilers follow.
There's Jade/Ashley and Bambi, who met and became lovers in prison, who live together (with a cat named "Anaïs," which is a nice touch), but who also go on double dates with rock musicians, plus Jade/Ashley apparently has some sort of thing going with Denis.
There's Puck and Einar, who live together (also after meeting and becoming lovers in prison), but Puck also has an ongoing relationship with Trillium and Einar considerately steps out when she comes over.
Puck and Trillium get married, with "Einar acting as best man and deciding himself to elope with another groom-to-be who'd been waiting for a bride with what turned out to be cold feet, as, in fact, he discovered with signs of relief, were his own."
(Things end badly for Puck and Trillium, of course, but I think the lesson there is more, "Don't marry guys with swastikas tattooed on their heads.")
And there's also Sloane and Luz, who become lovers when Mickey goes missing, staking out the Wolfmann marital bed as their own territory. Until, of course, Mickey returns and reclaims his position and rights as patriarch of the household. But when Sloane and Luz are together it doesn't interfere with Luz having a fling with Doc (and there's also Luz's possible boyfriend, but that's only Doc's deduction–it's not proved one way or the other). And of course there's also some joking that Doc is titillated by the thought of Sloane and Luz together, though that seems to pale beside his fetish for "Manson chicks."
Nobody declares that they're "gay" or "straight" or "bisexual," or feels any apparent pressure to make any sort of declarations. The only explicit statement at all is Puck's mention of Detective Indelicato's "hatred of homos." Clearly, the open spirit of experimentation doesn't extend to the LAPD.
And this is a specific instance of what Pynchon refers to in broader terms at the end, where Doc is driving through a thick fog and thinks that it might spread and settle in regionwide. "Maybe then it would stay this way for days, maybe he'd have to just keep driving, down past Long Beach, down through Orange County, and San Diego, and across a border where nobody could tell anymore in the fog who was Mexican, who was Anglo, who was anybody."
He wants the fog to roll away and reveal another world, where people are not divided into all sorts of categories but instead can just be people.
This is related to what I've done in my writing. Vicki is gay, but she doesn't make any proclamations about it, and in fact we get through a whole novel with her before we even learn what her preference is. The only time she refers to her sexuality at all (except in private conversation with Jan or Marshall) is in the chapter "A Different Choice", where she calls herself a dyke, but that's to make a point to her mother. Which is "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam," more or less.
And I guess the flip side is SarahBeth, who does declare that she's gay (whether or not anybody asks), but doesn't see why that should mean she can't have a boyfriend if she wants to.
January 26th, 2010
(Or why Inherent Vice will never be recognized as Thomas Pynchon's best novel.)
I'm not saying that it is his best novel. I'm not ready to make that kind of assessment yet, and my choice would probably still be Mason & Dixon. However, the reasons why IV will never be recognized that way have nothing to do with its quality.
1) People are impressed by big books. There is a general idea, held by people who have never written either a novel or a short story, that writing novels is more difficult than writing short stories, and writing very big books is more difficult than writing shorter ones. As if albums with twenty songs are automatically better than ones with ten songs. As if "more difficult" = "better art." I was reading Mason & Dixon on the subway once, and the guy sitting next to me said, "I didn't think anybody ever finished his books." I had already read the book at least once, but I didn't mention that.
My experience, however, is that, in writing, shorter is the most difficult thing to do well. Ulysses is an amazing achievement, but "The Dead" is a better work of art.
And difficulty doesn't equate to quality. From what I've read, Rex Stout, probably my favorite mystery writer, wrote each of his Nero Wolfe novels in a few weeks, from the beginning straight through to the end, no rewrites, and then took the rest of the year off.
2) People think serious novels are more significant than funny ones, and IV is Pynchon's funniest novel yet. That's one assessment I am ready to make, though nothing in it is quite as hilarious as the disgusting English candy drill in Gravity's Rainbow, or the shenanigans at the Vrooms' house in Mason & Dixon.
Okay, maybe it isn't the funniest, but it is the goofiest. And it has the most sex, the most drugs, and the most rock and roll. And it probably involved less research than some of the others. So, it's definitely less impressive to the people who get impressed by the sorts of things that impress Academy Awards voters (who usually like movies which are long, historical, serious, and involve lots of suffering). However, as in I Heart Huckabees, the funniest stories are sometimes the most profound, though they are often not recognized as such because of people's prejudices on this subject.
Which may relate to the schism between people who think Shakespeare's greatest achievements are the big tragedies (Hamlet, Macbeth, etc.), and people like Orson Welles and Harold Bloom who think his greatest achievement was creating Falstaff.
3) Plus, of course, IV is a genre story (a mystery) and people have their prejudices about that, too.
January 25th, 2010
There is one American writer, however, whose fiction is the literary equivalent of a vast box set: a blissful, bizarro anthology of rock, jazz, pop, blues, country, show tunes, novelty numbers, you name it. Thomas Pynchon’s novels are like a giant jukebox just waiting to happen. Some of the songs are real, some are imaginary. All of them Pynchon makes his own. No other American writer has put so much music into his fiction.
Hmmm. That's from this article. Is that why I enjoy Pynchon so much? Well, no, I think there's more to it.
But it is a factor, I'm sure of that.
I've started to post on the Inherent Vice wiki. So, after years of very limited Wikipedia participation (I made edits to one article once), mostly because Wiki Markup Language annoys me because it seems arbitrarily different from HTML, I'm finally having to learn how these things work.
Oh, and noted jazz enthusiast "Uncle Mike" Sheldon is featured in this week's installment of the story "Carly."
Later: Of course, my specific enthusiasm for Inherent Vice may just be as simple as the fact that a writer I really like suddenly decided to write a mystery, and (of course) I'm now writing mysteries. But I think it's more than that, too.
(I am tempted to say that Thomas Pynchon is my "favorite writer," but I don't feel that I've read enough to have a favorite writer. When I say that Robert Altman is my favorite director, as I do here, I have at least seen a lot of movies. By the way, it did surprise me, in searching for the post I linked to above, how many times I have mentioned Altman in this blog – though I don't know why I should be surprised.)
Also, as in this entry, the New York Times blog After Deadline just mentioned another of my favorite rules:
[Caption] Mike L. has remained a father to a daughter that wasn’t really "his."
Use "who" for people, not "that."
Yup.
November 30th, 2009
First of all, the first part of "Carly" is posted.
Also, here are a few more random thoughts about Inherent Vice.
7. Throughout the book, there is a wonderful series of disgruntled and disaffected waiters and waitresses, usually describing in great detail the shortcomings of the dishes they are about to serve. Also there is a series of interior spaces which are described, in various different ways, as being larger than you would expect from the outside.
8. There's another series, too. V is V. Gravity's Rainbow is clearly V-2. If we consider Vineland to be, for the purpose of argument, V #3, then Inherent Vice would be #4. In Roman numerals, "IV." Which happens to be the initials of "Inherent Vice." Coincidence?
9. As my father always said, anybody can write a good first act, the trick is to be able to write a good third act. My overall feeling about each of Thomas Pynchon's novels is really based on two things. One: Did I manage to finish the thing? Two: How does it end?
V. (1963) is a complete pleasure. It has a great ending.
I need to re-read The Crying of Lot 49 (1966). It's been too long. (Later: I did re-read it, and I wrote about it here.)
Gravity's Rainbow (1973) is a "great book," winner of this and that award, etc., etc. It has many great parts, but I have never liked the ending. I've read defenses of the ending, but they have never convinced me.
Vineland (1990) is okay, but I didn't care for the ending. I've only read it once, though. (Later: I re-read this one, too, and I wrote about it here.)
Mason & Dixon (1997) is a complete pleasure. It has a great beginning, middle and end. Harold Bloom (according to wikipedia), "has hailed the novel as Pynchon's 'masterpiece to date.'" Which I would agree with (whether or not he actually said it).
Against the Day (2006) failed test #1. I didn't make it past page 200 or so. Maybe I'll try again some day. I vaguely remember I had to start Gravity's Rainbow a few times before I got a good momentum going.
Inherent Vice (2009) has a wonderful ending. Just about two pages, great writing, sentence after sentence, and very moving.
November 15th, 2009
A few random thoughts about Inherent Vice.
1. The plot actually does make sense. Who committed what crime and why, it all ties together.
2. The setup is classic: an old flame comes to the detective, asking for help. He agrees to help her, and, when beginning the investigation, he is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, his police department nemesis is there, accusing him of a murder. The cop then decides to release him, but the old flame has already vanished. (This is, for example, the plot of virtually every episode of Pat Novak for Hire.) Other clients come to the detective, to hire him for apparently-unrelated cases, but then connections start to appear.
3. Various critics have commented on the zany, typically-Pynchonian names (Buddy Tubeside, Rudy Blatnoyd, Dr. Threeply – and that's only the medical men), but nobody has commented on the pattern. Neighborhood characters have nicknames (Ensenada Slim, Flaco the Bad, St. Flip, Downstairs Eddie). Minor characters have zany names (Japonica Fenway, Jason Velveeta, Art Tweedle). Important characters, characters we're supposed to follow and even care about, have regular names, such as Doc's semi-g.f., Penny Kimball. Doc's relationship with Penny would come across completely differently if she was named Petunia Leeway or Trillium Fortnight. And that's also what cues us (subconsciously) that the Charlocks and the Harlingens are families we should care about.
4. When Doc is snooping at the mansion where the Boards (a surf band) live, he comes upon a room where a bunch of people are watching, with incredible attention and seriousness, Dark Shadows, and the narrator mentions that Dark Shadows had, at that point, "begun to get heavily into something called 'parallel time,' which was confounding the viewing audience nationwide, even those who remained with their wits about them, although many dopers found no problem at all in following it."
What "parallel time" really means (which is not completely defined in the novel) is another dimension, which you could find yourself in by accident (either temporarily or permanently), simply by walking through the wrong door at the right time, where the people look like the people you know, but they have different names and personalities and relationships than the people you're familiar with.
Well, Dark Shadows was indeed in parallel time at that point (May of 1970, the "1970PT" storyline to be exact), but this is significant for other reasons. For one thing, as has been discovered by readers even more obsessive than I am, there is an extra day in Inherent Vice. It's possible to figure out what day each event takes place because Doc is following the NBA playoffs throughout, and there's an extra day between May 4 and May 5. During that day, many people act out of character (some fairly extremely), as if Doc has himself stumbled into parallel time for a day.
5. Another possible occurrence of parallel time (which I discovered myself) is this curious progression: a) in Chapter Six, Doc has lunch with Penny and then she hands him over to the FBI for questioning; b) in Chapter Sixteen, Doc sees her again, and this betrayal is a big issue between them. But in Chapter Eight (which falls in between those two other events), Doc spends the night with Penny, and it's never mentioned.
6. And also, in Chapter Eighteen, Doc loses one of his huarache sandals, and walks around with only one for a while. In Chapter Twenty, Sauncho calls him on the phone and mentions, entirely unnecessarily, that Doc should wear some Topsiders for their proposed boat outing, rather than that one huarache he's been wearing. But, as far as we can tell, Sauncho hasn't seen Doc since he lost the sandal. They have two conversations in between there, but the first is presented as a dream, and the second (where Sauncho defines the legal term "inherent vice") appears to be a flashback.
Unless the dream wasn't really a dream after all...
Other Obsessions
Astoria, the cover artist on A Sane Woman, created a book one time where 8.5x11 paper just seemed slightly wrong, so she ended up using a paper cutter to trim 0.25" off of each book, so it would look right to her. I wouldn't do that, but I'm just as obsessive about other things, and one of them is the hypertext construction of "Carly" (as I mentioned last time). Well, I am doing it the "easy" way, in the blog (proving perhaps that I'm more obsessive about the construction of hypertext fiction than I am about elegant code), but it's still a lot of work. I had to do a flow chart (just for the first part) and it ended up spilling off the piece of paper I was using. The first part (of seven) should be up next week.
Oh, and for the duration of "Carly," RSS feeds on the utownwriting site are suspended, since this story won't work unless you're reading it on the web. RSS feeds will continue here, of course, so you can find out when the story is updated.
I'm also starting to think about writing a hypertext mystery story, and how that would work.
November 8th, 2009
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