#11: Big Books v/s Breaking Bad
Guess who's back? Should Pynchon just write Erotica? The Novel's in Danger?
Hey folks, it’s been a while since I showed up in this space. Have you been doing okay? I hope June has been a kind month to you.
Thank you for sticking around and thank you for reading TRL. A big thanks to Writing Hour, a group of writer-friends that I’ve been privileged to be a part of. It’s because of them that this newsletter will be coming back to life. Credit where credit’s due. Now without further ado.
In this edition of TRL I’d love to share a little about the reading I have been up to this month.
So three heavy-weights I am currently wrestling with: Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu.
To paraphrase a Goodreads comment, Gravity’s Rainbow is a book about men in WW2 getting erections. I expected the book to be dense and maximalist but I didn’t at all anticipate erotica, and not just men getting a hardon (the word Pynchon uses throughout) but also full-length sex scenes. So if you’re going to read the book, I would advise against reading it with your family.
In an author interview with Jonathan Franzen, when asked about the danger novels face as leisure and entertainment pieces when there is an ever-widening and deepening ocean of OTT shows, which ostensibly provide equal if not more pleasure and fun to the entertainee, Franzen replied, (to paraphrase) it’d be useless for the novel to fight TV for attention.
Not because we’ve officially lost our attention span and resort to less demanding pleasures, rather there are shows that live up to the mark of an incredibly satisfying novel, Franzen said, shows like Breaking Bad, which I agree with.
I think a good balance between OTT and fiction is a sweet spot I would vie for. I choose not to make a preference between either but between what is more entertaining and enjoyable regardless of how it scrambles my brain as I consume it, in a fun way.
What are your thoughts on this anxiety around whether the novel is nearing its end, maybe just the long novel (500-700 pagers) and should we throw in the towel and let Heisenberg get the last laugh (I can’t remember if he really did or not, but I am pleased with not remembering, and maybe even rewatching my favourite bits as I would reread a favourite book).
P.S. - I am looking forward to getting a hardcopy of a biography of the novel titled rather plainly by the author Michael Schmidt, The Novel. It’s part history, part drama between novelists since the first novel in English showed up and part prescription about what makes a novel great (apart from the usual canon that’s already predominant).
To end, a quote from the book, The Novel, that I’ve been going back to:
Jonathan Franzen reminds us that the writer's relationship with this objective canon is mysterious. “When I write, I don’t feel like a craftsman influenced by earlier craftsmen who were themselves influences by earlier craftsmen. I feel like a member of a single, large virtual community in which I have dynamic relationships with other members of the community, most of who are no longer living.”
Welcome back 😊
Great read this one 👌🏻