Human Civilization, As Seen From a Great Height
I’m about 30 pages into the new Thomas Pynchon book, Against the Day and enjoying it immensely. There’s so much story, character and information on each page, that it’s easy to get overwhelmed and bit overstimulated. It’s also a little difficult to keep everything straight in our linear-trained minds. I think this is what trips some people up when it comes to enjoying Pynchon’s writing. His books are not novels in the conventional sense. He isn’t telling the life story of one person or setting out to illustrate a single idea. It’s a survey of humanity and out civilization from a different perspective. In this case, from a great height, which can be dizzying. Luckily, we have the Pynchon wiki to help us sort it all out.
What’s really amazing is that ten years ago, when Mason & Dixon was published, the Internet wasn’t advanced enough to have such a resource in place. We were all left on our own to sort out the details for ourselves, without so much as a compass or a sextant. Finally though, the world has caught up to the scope of Thomas Pynchon, which is the real reason for inventing web 2.0 and social networking, Myspace be damned.