Noiseless Chatter

The Love Songs of Thomas Pynchon

So this is what I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day…only I planned for it around five months in advance and then forgot to do it. It’s a collection of love songs from Thomas Pynchon’s novels. I’m a huge Pynchon fan (DID YOU KNOW THAT??) and the little original ditties he embeds in his text are like charming, reliable life-rafts amid the glorious, chaotic sprawl. And I’ll be honest…every time I’ve picked up a new Pynchon book I’ve looked forward to the songs the most. They range from silly to clever to genius, and, in some way, I love them all.

When I used to run a different (much more personal) blog, I posted The Love Songs of Thomas Pynchon for Valentine’s Day, and it very surprisingly became the most popular post on my site. I have no idea why, but it was certainly a great feeling, and with that site long gone I thought I’d post it again. This time I’m including a few songs I left out of the first post — no real reason, I just wasn’t as big a fan of them — and I’m including the love songs from the two novels that have come out in the meantime. So this is much more complete.

Pynchon deliberately blurs lines between love, lust, friendship and fondness, so there are a few arguable love songs that were left out, and maybe a few that leaned in another direction that might have crept in instead. But here you go. In some cases Pynchon assigns his own song titles, but he usually does not. Any song titles that I’ve taken the liberty of assigning are in brackets, so blame me if you don’t think they’re appropriate. I’ve also left in a few textual moments if I felt they contributed to the “feel” or understanding of the song. Otherwise they were trimmed out for the sake of easier reading.

I hope you enjoy. Reading Pynchon is a blast, and his songs are a huge part of that. Some of them are silly, some of them are genuinely moving, and some of them are just absurdly fun. I threw in a gorgeous interpretation of “The Eyes of a New York Woman” at the end, just because it’s wonderful…and it’s always fun to get a glimpse into how these songs sound to somebody else. I can only ever hear my own versions, in my own head. And I hope you enjoy the ones you hear, too. Happy late Valentine’s Day.

“Serenade” The Crying of Lot 49, p27

As I lie and watch the moon
On the lonely sea,
Watch it tug the lonely tide
Like a comforter over me,
The still and faceless moon
Fills the beach tonight
With only a ghost of day,
All shadow gray, and moonbeam white.
And you lie alone tonight,
As alone as I;
Lonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that’s where it’s at,
So hush your lonely cry.
How can I come to you, put out the moon, send back the tide?
The night has gone so gray, I’d lose the way, and it’s dark inside.
No, I must lie alone,
Till it comes for me;
Till it takes the sky, the sand, the moon, and the lonely sea.
And the lonely sea…etc. [FADE OUT.]

["Little Grass Skirt"] Vineland, p63

Whoa! Come ‘n’ let me roll that
Little grass skirt,
In the Zig Zag, of my em-
Brace!

Light on up, With th’
Flame of love, take
The frown right, off o’ your face!

Put it in a roach clip,
Pass it to and fro,
In between your lips and let th’
Good smoke flow, oh

It won’t cost much, and
It ain’t gonna hurt, just
C’mere with that uh little, grass skirt!

["Esther's Nose Job"] V., p111

Have I told you, fella
She’s got the sweetest columella
And a septum that’s swept ‘em all on their ass;
Each casual chondrectomy
Meant only a big fat check to me
Till I sawed this osteoclastible lass:

[Refrain]:
Till you’ve cut into Esther
You’ve cut nothing at all;
She’s one of the best, Thir,
To her nose I’m in thrall.

She never acts nasty
But lies still as a rock;
She loves my rhinoplasty
But the others are schlock.

Esther is passive,
Her aplomb is massive,
How could any poor ass’ve
Ever passed her by?

And let me to you say
She puts Ireland to shame;
For her nose is retroussé
And Esther’s her name….

For the last eight bars she chanted “No” on one and three.

“The Englishman’s Very Shy (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p184

(Bloat):
The Englishman’s very shy,
He’s none of your Ca-sa-no-va,
At bowling ladies o-ver,
A-mericans lead the pack–

(Tantivy):
–You see, your Englishman tends to lack
That recklessness transatlantic,
That women find so romantic
Though frankly I can’t see why…

(Bloat):
The polygamous Yank with his girls galore
Give your Brit-ish rake or carouser fits,

(Tantivy):
Though he’s secretly held in re-ve-rent awe
As a sort of e-rot-ic Clausewitz….

(Together):
If only one could al-ly
A-merican bedroom know-how
With British good looks, then oh how
These lovelies would swoon and sigh,
Though you and I know the Englishman’s very shy.

["For Susannah"] Mason & Dixon, p143

I was only sixteen, upon your wedding day,
I stood outside the churchyard, and cried.
And now I’m working for the man, who carried you away,
And ev’ry day I see you by his side.

Sometimes you’re smiling,– sometimes you ain’t,
Most times you never look my way,–
I’m still as a Mill-Pond, I’m as patient as a Saint,
Wond’ring if there’s things you’d like to say.

Oh, are you day-dreaming of me,
Do you tuck me in at Night,
When he’s fast asleep beside you,
Are those Fingers doing right?
How can Love conquer all,
When Love can be so blind? and you’ve got
Bradley on your Name,
And Mason on your Mind….

["Cheap Romance"] Vineland, p281

Whoo! is this the start of a
Cheap ro-mance,
Nothin’ much to do with
High fi-nance,
Is it th’ start of,
Another cheap ro-mance?

(Here Scott Oof, as he had for thousands of identical renditions, filled with a phrase stolen from Mickey Baker on “Love Is Strage” [1956].)

This hot tomato’s lookin’
Mighty sweet,
Uh just th’ thing to git me,
Off my feet,
Oboy, the start of,
Another cheap ro-ho-mance!

Yep — looks like the start of
Another cheap ro-ho-
Ma-a-a-a-ance…
Gits ya thinkin’, is it
Me, or is it mah
Pa-a-a-a-hants?

Well cheap romance is my
Kind of thing,
Uh just in case you were
Wondering,
“Is it the start of,
Another cheap ro-wo-mance?”

["Be My Hottentot Bondsman Tonight"] V., p252

Love’s a lash,
Kisses gall the tongue, harrow the heart;
Caresses tease
Cankered tissue apart.

Liebchen, come
Be my Hottenton bondsman tonight,
The sjambok’s kiss
Is unending delight.

Love, my little slave,
Is color-blind;
For white and black
Are only states of mind.

So at my feet
Nod and genuflect, whimper for me:
Though tears are dried
Their pain is yet to be.

“Pavlovia (Beguine)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p232

It was spring in Pavlovia-a-a,
I was lost, in a maze…
Lysol breezes perfumed the air,
I’d been searching for days.
I found you, in a cul-de-sac,
As bewildered as I–
We touched noses, and suddenly
My heart learned how to fly!

So together, we found our way,
Shared a pellet, or two…
Like an evening in some café,
Wanting nothing, but you…

Autumn’s come, to Pavlovia-a-a,
Once again, I’m alone–
Finding sorrow by millivolts,
Back to neurons and bone.
And I think of our moments then,
Never knowing your name–
Nothing’s left in Pavlovia,
But the maze, and the game….

["The Austo-Hungarian Blues"] Against the Day, p915

No need for feel-ing so down,
Just spend a night-on-the-town,
The-Dan-ube won’t, look-so blue–
not if you do, like I do–
Just get on out-to-the ucca,
Take a stroll up–the a-ve-nue,
You’ll find that ci-ty beat puts-a
–Synco-pation in-your shoe,
Find-one-of-those
Austro-Hun-gar-i-an ladies,
So super-ficially deep,
Down where the gi-golos creep,
Too full of rhyth-m to sleep,
All-you-need’s-a
Good-time girl from the K and K,
Who can’t tell you if it’s night or day,
And slip away on a cruise, from
Those Austro-Hungarian blues!

["Love Never Goes Away"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p294

Love never goes away,
Never completely dies,
Always some souvenir
Takes us by sad surprise.

You went away from me,
One rose was left behind–
Pressed in my Book of Hours,
That is the rose I find….

Though it’s another year,
Though it’s another me,
Under the rose is a drying tear,
Under my linden tree….

Love never goes away,
Not if it’s really true,
It can return, by night, by day,
Tender and green and new
As the leaves from a linden tree, love,
that I left with you.

["Cutie in a GTO"] Inherent Vice, p78

Thought I musta been hallu-cinating,
Waiting at the light she called to me, “Let’s go!”
How am I supposed to refuse an 18-
Year-old cutie in a GTO?

We took off north, from the light at Topanga,
Tires smokin in a long hot scream,
Under the hood of my Ford Mustang, a
427 cammer runnin just like a dream–
[Bridge]
Grille to grille, by the time we hit
Leo Carrillo [Horn section fill],
And it still, wasn’t over by Point Mugu–
Just a Ford Mustang and a sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean,
Doin what the motorheads do.

Shoulda filled-up when I got-off, the San Diego, it’s
Been pinned on empty for the last ten miles,
Next thing I know she’s wavin hasta lu-ego, flashin
One of those big California smiles–

Bummed out on the shoulder, couldn’t feel bluer,
Here comes that familiar Ram Air blast,
What’s that on the front seat, right next to her,
It’s a shiny red can full of high-test gas–

So we grooved, back on down, past
Leo Carrillo [Same horn fill],
Grille to grille all the way down to Malibu,
Just a Ford Mustang and that sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean
Doin what the motorheads do….

["P's and Q's"] V., p307

It is something less than heaven
To be quoted Thesis 1.7
Every time I make an advance;
If the world is all that the case is
That’s a pretty discouraging basis
On which to pursue
Any sort of romance.
I’ve got a proposition for you;
Logical, positive and brief.
And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:

[Refrain]
Let P equal me,
With my heart in command;
Let Q equal you
With Tractatus in hand;
And R could stand for a lifetime of love,
Filled with music to fondle and purr to.
We’ll define love as anything lovely you’d care to infer to.
On the right, put that bright,
Hypothetical case;
On the left, our uncleft,
Parenthetical chase.
And that horseshoe there in the middle
Could be lucky; we’ve nothing to lose,
If in these parentheses
We just mind our little P’s
And Q’s.

If P [Mafia sang in reply] thinks of me
As a girl hard to make,
Then Q wishes you
Would go jump in the lake.
For R is a meaningless concept,
Having nothing to do with pleasure:
I prefer the hard and tangible things I can measure.
Man, you chase in the face
Of impossible odds;
I’m a lass in the class
Of unbossable broads.
If you’ll promise no more sticky phrases,
Half a mo while I kick off my shoes.
There are birds, there are bees,
And to hell with all your P’s
And Q’s.

["On Yashmeen"] Against the Day, p598

Her idea of banter
Likely isn’t Cantor,
Nor is she apt to murmur low
Axioms of Zermelo,
She’s been kissed by geniuses,
Amateur Frobeniuses,
One by one in swank array,
Bright as any Poincaré,
And…though she
May not care for Cauchy,
Any more than Riemann,
We’ll just have to dream on…
Let
it occur in spots in
Whittaker and Watson–
Unforeseen converging,
Miracles emerging,
Epsilonic dances,
Small but finite chances,
For love…

“Julia (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p248

Ju-lia,
Would you think me pe-cul-iar,
If I should fool ya,
In-to givin’ me–just-a-little-kiss?

Jool-yaaahh,
No one else could love you tru-lier,
How I’d worship and bejewel ya,
If you’d on-ly give-me just-a-little-kiss!

Ahh Jool-yaaahhhh–
My poor heart grows un-ru-lier,
No one oolier or droolier,
Could I be longing for–
What’s more–

Ju-lia,
I would should hallelujah,
To have my Jool-yaaahh,
In-my-arms forevermore.

["Constables in Love"] Against the Day, p679

You know, it’s…
Only copper propa-
gaaaan-da, that
Policemen never woo, woo, woo!
–You
Know I’d be just as cud-dly as a
Paaaan-da,
If only-I-knew,
You wan-ted-to-cud-dle-me too! E-
-ven in Ken-ya, Tangan-yi-ka and U-
gaaaan-da,
It’s not that unheard of…
Coz it’s a
Proper crop o’propa-
gaaaanda, that
A flat-tie can’t fall in love!

“Just Like a William Powell” Vineland, p162

Oh it’s like layin’ bricks, without a trowel,
Like havin’ a luau, with no fish ‘n’ poi,
When you’re just like, a William Powell,
Lookin’ for some, Myrna Loy!

Well, Lassie’s got Roddy McDowall,
Trigger’s got, Dale and Roy,
Asta’s got William Powell, goin’
“Where th’ heck’s that, Myrna Loy?”

And just think of how Tarzan, would start to how-l,
If he only was hangin’ out, with Cheetah and Boy –
I feel like th’ alphabet, without a vowel,
Like Flatfoot Floogie, with only one Floy –

Guess I’ll just, throw in the towel,
Aw I’ll never find the, real McCoy,
Just another William Powell,
Lookin’ for that Myrna Loy….

“Too Soon to Know (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p198

It’s still too soon,
It’s not as if we’d kissed and kindled,
Or chased the moon
Through midnight’s hush, as dancing dwindled
Into quiet dawns,
Over secret lawns…

Too soon to know
If all that breathless conversation
A sigh ago
Was more than casual flirtation
Doomed to drift away
Into misty gray…

How can we tell,
What can we see?
Love works its spells in hiding,
Quite past our own deciding…

So who’s to say
If joyful love is just beginning,
Or if its day
Just turned to night, as Earth went spinning?
Darling, maybe so–
It’s TOO SOON TO KNOW.

["A Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in Love"] V., p282

I know what you want,
Princess of coquettes:
Deviations, fantasies and secret amulets.

Only try to go
Further than you’ve gone
If you never want to live to see another dawn.

Seventeen is cruel,
Yet at forty-two,
Purgatory fires burn no livelier than you.

So, come away from him,
Take my hand instead,
Let the dead get to the task of burying their dead;
Through that hidden door again,
Bravo for ’04 again; I’m a
Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in love…

["Mister Farenheit"] Mason & Dixon, p552

Say, Mister Farenheit,
She doesn’t treat me right,
Wish you could warm up that Lady of mine,–
Look at you, on the wall,
Don’t have a, care at all,–
Even tho’ our love has plung’d,
To minus nintey-nine,– now, Doctor
Celsius, and ev’ryone else, yes,
Say, you’ve plenty to spare,–
Don’t let us freeze, can’t you
Send some Degrees, from where-
-Ever you are, out there,–
Damme,
Mister Farenheit,–
Here comes another night,
I shall once again be shiv’ring through,
With no help from your Scale,
‘Tis all Ice and Hail, and
I’ll turn-into a Snow-man, too.

["Dance it Away"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p558

And all the world’s busy, this twi-light!
Who knows what morning-streets, our shoes have known?
Who knows, how many friends, we’ve left, to cry alone?
We have a moment together,
We’ll hum this tune for a day…
Ev’ryone’s dancing, in twi-light,
Dancing the bad dream a-way….

["Durango Dove"] Against the Day, p202

Out on the wind…
Durango dove,
Ride the sky,
Dare the storm….
We never once
Did speak of love,
Or I’d be free,
And a long time gone….
When the lamplight
Comes on in town,
Rings and rouge,
Satin gown…
Oh, but my
Lost…
Durango dove,
Do they believe it all,
The way I do?
Would they fall
Into your sky,
Even die,
Dove, for you….

["A Girl in Cuxhaven"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p639

I dream that I have found us both again,
With spring so many strangers’ lives away,
And we, so free,
Out walking by the sea,
With someone else’s paper words to say….

They took us at the gates of green return,
Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why–
Do children meet again?
Does any trace remain,
Along the superhighways of July?

["Teenage Romeo"] V., p387

Little teen-age goddess
Don’t tell me no,
Into the park tonight
We’re going to go,
Let me be
Your teen-age Romeo….

“Serge’s Song” The Crying of Lot 49, p120

What chance has a lonely surfer boy
For the love of a surfer chick,
With all these Humbert Humbert cats
Coming on so big and sick?
For me, my baby was a woman,
For him she’s just another nymphet;
Why did they run around, why did she put me down,
And get me so upset?
Well, as long as she’s gone away-yay,
I’ve had to find somebody new,
And the older generation
Has taught me what to do–
I had a date last night with an eight-year-old,
And she’s a swinger just like me,
So you can find us any night up on the football field,
In back of P.S. 33 (oh, yeah),
And it’s as groovy as it can be.

["A Loser at the Game of Love"] Gravity’s Rainbow, p684

Just a fool-who-never-wins, at love,
Though-he-plays, most-ev’, ry night…
A loser-to-the-Ones, Above,
Who stack-the-cards, of wrong, and right….
Oh, the loser never bets-it-all, and-he never-plays, to win,
He knows if-once, you don’t-succeed, you can al-ways lose-again!
Just a loser at-the-game, of love…
Spending night after night a-lo-o-o-one!

["Cape Girl"] Mason & Dixon, p80

Oh,
Cape Girrl,
In the Ocean Wind,
Fairer than the full Moon,
Secret as a Sin,–
You’re a,
Light Lass,
So the Lads all say,
Sitting on your Stoep, hop-
-Ing Love will pass today…
You keep your Slaves about,
As don’t we all,
Yet no one in love is brave,
And even a Slave may fall…
In love with,–
Cape Girl,
When South-Easters blow,
Thro’ my Dreams, I know,
To your Arms I’ll go,
Cape Girl, don’t say no.

["My Singing Bird of Spitalfields"] Against the Day, p684

Oh, Sing-
-ing Bird,
Of Spital-fields–
How lonely i’-all-feels,
Wiv-out your mel-
o-dee! When shall my
Brick Lane bunt-ing
Chirp-again,
To my throbbing-brain,
Her dear refrain,
Soft-leee? Al-
though it’s spring
In Stepney, so-we’re-told,
Here in my
Heart-it’s-cold
As any-win-
try sea–until my
Singing Bird of
Spit-alfields,
Perched on her lit-tle heels,
Comes trip-ping back,
To meee!
–(My dar-ling),
[D.C.]

["Es Posible"] Vineland, p343

Mention…[rattle of bongos] to me, [picking up slow tropical beat]
“Es posible,”
And I won’t need a replay,
My evening, is yours….

Yes that’s all, it takes,
Incre-íble,
Would it be so…ter-reeb-lay,
To dare hope for more?

¿Es posible?
Could you at last be, the one?
Increíble,
Out of so many mil-lyun,
What fun,

If you [bongo rattle, as above] would say,
“Es po-ho-seeb-lay,”
While that old Mar Carib’ lay
‘Neath the moonlight above,
Es posible,
Increíble,
It’s love…[fill phrase such as B-C-E-C-B flat]
It’s love…[etc., board-fading]

["Skyful of Hearts"] Inherent Vice, p337

There’s a skyful of hearts,
Broken in two,
Some flyin full fare,
Some non-revenue,
All us bit actors
Me him and you,
Playin our parts,
In a skyful of hearts…

Up there in first class,
Ten-dollar wine,
Playing canasta,
Doin so fine,
Suddenly, uh-oh,
Here’s ‘at No Smokin sign
That’s how it starts,
In a skyful of hearts…

[Bridge]
To the roar of the fanjet…
You went on your way…
I’ll sure miss you, and yet…
There ain’t much to say…

Now I’m flyin alone
In economy class,
Drinkin the cheap stuff,
Till I’m flat on my ass,
Watchin my torch song
Fall off the charts,
But that’s how it goes
In a skyful of hearts…

["The Eyes of a New York Woman"] V., p145

The eyes of a New York woman [he started to sing]
Are the twilit side of the moon,
Nobody knows what goes on back there
Where it’s always late afternoon.

Under the lights of Broadway,
Far from the lights of home,
With a smile as sweet as a candy cane
And a heart all plated with chrome.

Do they ever see the wandering bums
And the boys with no place to go,
And the drifter who cried for an ugly girl
That he left in Buffalo?

Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me.
Are never going to cry for me.

Review: A Soul’s Calling, Scott Bishop

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.

When I was a boy, I used to go camping with my father. During one of these trips, my brother and I decided to take a little walk together. We didn’t think we walked very far, but trying to find our way back to the campsite was difficult. Everything looked the same and the return trip took at least five times as long as the journey out. Ultimately, though, we found our way back.

That which you have just read is true. But it is not, I absolutely hasten to add, a story. It might be an anecdote, but I doubt it’d be a very entertaining one. More likely it’s the sort of thing I might bring up with a group of friends, all of whom are exchanging brief, inconsequential narratives on the same theme (being lost, childhood memories, camping with kids…). But even in the right context, it doesn’t become a story. It’s just something that in some (but certainly not all) cases might be worth repeating.

I could drag it out, certainly. I could add reams of accurate detail that may well make the recitation more vivid for my listeners, but the compounding of unnecessary detail doesn’t turn it into a story either, and without a great deal of fictionalization, it never could be one.

There’s nothing wrong with fictionalization. At least, not within the context of fiction. (That’s kind of where the word comes from.) Fictionalization is a good thing for stories. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s the single most important thing. Storytelling is an art, and art lives and dies by the talent of the artist. We might be fine listening to a close friend tell us about a personal experience, and in that case we might feel cheated if we later found out he was embellishing it excessively.

However when we pick up a novel, we don’t want to read a dry recitation of something that the author did. First of all, that’s not what a novel is. And secondly, the novelist needs to demonstrate, in some way, a mastery of his art. This can take many forms, of course; it can be the active and deliberate bafflement of Joyce or the intense simplicity of Hemingway. It can — even better — be one of numberless possibilities in between those two extremes.

But an artist has to do something, otherwise he isn’t creating art. He’s just saying things.

A Soul’s Calling, a novel based on author Scott Bishop’s experience of hiking to the base camp at Everest, just says things.

It’s admittedly difficult to issue this as a universal criticism, especially since the writing in A Soul’s Calling isn’t uniformly bad, but this is essentially a long, long first-draft that is in dire need of a more compelling rewrite. As it stands it reads no better than my camping anecdote, but takes around 1,700 times as long to finish saying nothing. And that’s the problem. Some of my favorite pieces of writing “say nothing,” but they say it in so moving, amusing, or thrilling a way that the act of saying nothing becomes a kind of art unto itself. It takes — or, rather, is sculpted into — a shape, a series of shapes, patterns within patterns that compose themselves into larger movements and statements. That’s what fiction is for.

A Soul’s Calling doesn’t do that. It presents copious details in the hopes that obsessive accuracy will eventually conjure up its own kind of interest in the reader. But it does not.

To be honest, I’m not even sure I should be judging this book as a novel. Its back cover refers to it as a novel, yes, but it also refers it as a memoir…and those two things are mutually exclusive. You can’t actually be both. You can be a Nabokov-esque memoir of a fictional character, or you can be a Vonnegut-like fictionalized memoir, but in each case you’re still writing a novel, and the format (or intention) of memoir becomes a utility…a filter through which that novel is read.

That is not what we have here, and though I’m making a bit of an executive decision by calling it a novel, I think the presence of spirits and talking mountains and a main character who receives visions of an apocalyptic future that he alone can avoid somehow by making this journey all seat the book firmly in the category of “fiction.”

If any of that seems to be out of place for a story about a journey to Everest, then you might be disappointed to learn that it’s also completely unnecessary, and — to be honest — nonsensically handled. When Kurt Vonnegut takes us away from the real-life horrors of World War II to make comical digressions to an extra-terrestrial zoo, or Thomas Pynchon sees it fit to insert a sentient mechanical duck into the surveying party of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, they do so in order to make colorful points about the things we think we’re familiar with…in order to slant our perspectives enough that we can view the familiar in a new and unexpected way.

However when Bishop employs these strange intrusions, they serve only to confuse his intentions. What’s more, they ring loudly as artificial and empty gestures. After all, when George Mallory was asked why he intended to climb Mount Everest, he famously (and maybe apocryphally) replied with three words that have been connected with the mountain ever since: “Because it’s there.”

Everest is, within our cultural landscape, a mountain whose conquering legendarily requires no justification. It is in itself a justification. If reaching its peak is understood universally as being entirely free from — and separate from — mere human reasoning, then I’m not sure why we need urgent entreaties from the Spirit Realm to justify the comparatively minor trek to its base camp.

The real problem, though, is that this unnecessary justification fails to even justify itself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making the protagonist the “Chosen One” who alone can prevent massive calamity on a universal scale; this has been the backbone of everything from The Bible to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are countless places you can go with the idea, which is what keeps it from feeling stale in the right hands. It may come across as somewhat trite, but it’s an acceptable triteness that we expect will pay off in some interesting flourishes along the way.

In A Soul’s Calling, however, the protagonist / narrator (who shares a name with the author) some emissaries from the spirit world turn up, tell “Scott” that he needs to journey to the base camp at Everest, and then essentially disappear from the novel entirely. We do hear from them again, but they never actually explain what the issue is, what exact function “Scott’s” journey will serve, or why “Scott” was chosen at all. In fact, every time the narrator describes these conversations or visions, he lapses into an evasive textual shrug, admitting that he can’t really explain what he saw or heard…so, I guess, we just have to trust him when he says that his ethereal Princess Leia assured him he was our only hope. Whether or not he was qualified to shoulder the burden of universal salvation I can’t say, but as a reader I’m absolutely positive he’s not qualified to narrate if he can’t tell us about the most interesting things in the book.

Part of me wants to see this as a deliberate evasion. It wants me to read these moments — and there are many of them — as evidence of unreliable narration. That would indeed go a long way toward turning A Soul’s Calling into a work of art, as opposed to a collection of pages. But that part of me easily loses the war against another part of me: the one that read the book. Bishop’s inexplicable and unexplained forays into a spiritual justification for the trip are simply a baffling obstacle lost in the midst of so many other baffling obstacles, and it becomes an unintentional running joke that the narrator preemptively defends himself against the logical faculties of his audience, assuring us openly that these spiritual visitations — which occur when he’s in bed with his eyes closed — are not dreams. Why are they not dreams? Because they’re not dreams. That’s why. Well, that’s me told I guess.

Even if I could accept that “Scott” were the only hope for both this world and the spiritual world, and that his trip to and back from the base camp at Everest would somehow avoid The Biggest Apocalypse Ever, I absolutely cannot accept that, as a writer, Bishop so eagerly buries the lede.

If you were personally visited by spirits who told you that you needed to perform some earthly task in order to prevent the Alleged Cosmic Implosion of All That Ever Was and Will Be, and you did that thing, you’d then be pretty eager to tell everyone about it. Right? I know I would. But I also know that I’d spend a lot of my time talking about the spirits and the apocalypse, and probably wouldn’t spend nearly all of 340 pages methodically documenting that earthly task instead. And I suspect your narration would have a similar bent. “Scott,” on the other hand, waives away interest in the spirits, and thinks we’re more interested in how many times he stops for Pringles along the way to base camp.

The story here is that “Scott” was visited by ambassadors from another realm — a realm most human beings don’t even know exist — and assigned an urgent task that alone can avoid total intergalactic destruction…but Bishop thinks the story is that he took a difficult walk through the Himalayas. And I simply cannot abide that oversight. After all, that’s what prevents this from being a story, and restricts it to being instead a sloppily-framed and long-winded anecdote.

There are lots of other issues at play here, as well, including a massively problematic relationship at the book’s core. “Scott” and his guide Tej feud constantly on their way to Everest. To his credit, the narrator understands that this relationship is strained. To his much larger debit, he never realizes that the reason it’s strained is that he keeps arguing with Tej, childishly overriding his experienced council, and insisting that they do things “Scott’s” way. After all, Tej has only spent a lifetime physically guiding people along this exact route…and “Scott” has done several nights’ worth of reading on the Internet, so clearly he should be stubbornly disregarding everything his guide is so emphatically trying to tell him.

I was absolutely astounded by the way this played out between the narrator and Tej. All along I was expecting “Scott” to learn his lesson, but no, A Soul’s Calling wants us to believe that the moody American was right all along, and Tej was out of line for questioning him.

I’ve never seen anything like this. I kept expecting “Scott” to receive his comeuppance in some way and realize that the rich and beautiful world he’s so desperately trying to make conform to his expectations is actually the world he should be opening himself to. I find it hard to imagine a version of The Darjeeling Limited in which the Whitman brothers learn that it was smart of them to cling to their possessions and petty grievances, and I find it impossible to imagine that that would work at all as a film. When you fight against accepting another’s culture, the audiences laugh at you because they know better. When you stop resisting, the audience is on your side because you learned your lesson. In A Soul’s Calling however the opposite happens, and the audience is meant to be glad that “Scott” had the willpower to resist the foolish guidance of his (ahem…) guide. And I’ve never seen anything like that before. It genuinely hurt to read.

There’s more I could talk about at this point — such as the narrator’s explanation that every person who’s ever disliked him in life was actually being manipulated by evil spirits (which must be pretty nice, as everyone who’s ever disliked me in my life has done so because I was a dick to them in some way…you know, something that I’m actually responsible for as a human being and therefore must learn a lesson from) — but I think I’ve said enough.

A Soul’s Calling could have had some value, at least potentially, as a dry yet meticulous travelogue, but it ultimately fails there as well because the travel comes across as dead and routine. The narrator arrives somewhere, Tej tells him to go one way, the narrator throws a tantrum and goes another, the narrator gets exhausted, the narrator leans on a rock, the narrator tells us about something he read on the internet, and the narrator goes to sleep in a lodge. It’s just a simple, cyclical repetition of the same few ideas, with no substance or character at all, making this magical and important journey feel more like a boring car ride during which nobody feels like looking out the windows.

I’d like to read a version of A Soul’s Calling that makes something of its own components. I want to know what the spirits are talking about, exactly, rather than getting a spill of vague gibberish about them every one hundred pages or so. I want to see the narrator grapple with the possibility that the spirits aren’t real, and that he might actually be losing his grip on reality, just as any human being would. And most importantly, I want to see the narrator face some consequences for his behavior toward other people, without simply being able to handwave their disgust as being due to the interference of some invisible boogey man.

Because what we have isn’t a story. It’s a recitation of things that happen, yes, but it’s not a story. And it’s not a novel, and it’s not a memoir, and it’s not a travelogue. It’s a numbered collection of pages, and it’s waiting for somebody to give it shape. I hope somebody does; it’ll undoubtedly be for the better.

FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.

My Week of Cleaning Out the Netflix Queue: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

I have no idea what I just watched.

I do know that its full title is The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension but that was too long for WordPress.

That’s all I know about what I just watched, because I have no idea what I just watched.

It’s about some brain surgeon who performs experimental surgery, but that doesn’t tie into the rest of the movie at all. The movie focuses more on this same man’s career as a rock musician / physicist / comic book hero / cosmic adventurer / crash test dummy / sex symbol, but that doesn’t tie into it really, either. I have no idea what I just watched.

This is a movie I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time. Mainly because it immortalized in film Yoyodyne, the shady corporation known to literary geeks like myself from The Crying of Lot 49. That means that this film is one of very, very few that could possibly be said to take place within the same universe as any of Pynchon’s works, and that’s worth a recommendation in itself. As an added bonus, one of the characters employed there in Lot 49 was first introduced in Gravity’s Rainbow, which itself featured a character whose ancestors we meet in Mason & Dixon, a-and…I’ll stop myself there, suffice it to say that this indirectly ties the film not just into one of Thomas Pynchon’s books, but — by virtue of intratextual connectivity — the entire Thomas Pynchon oeuvre.

Of course, none of that factors into the plot here, which finds Buckaroo Banzai driving through a solid mountain, only when he comes out there’s a sort of alien fetus attached to the underside of his car, but that can’t be very important because it never comes up again. So the President of the United States calls him up to congratulate him on finding the alien fetus or something but it’s not really the President…it’s an alien from a race that wants to destroy Earth (and doesn’t live inside of mountains so I guess it’s a different alien species to the alien species that includes the alien fetus Buckaroo found on the underside of his car, which makes sense because if you destroy Earth you destroy those mountains AND THEN WHAT). But these aliens that prank called him don’t actually want to destroy Earth, they’re exceptions to the rest of their species, so they electrocute Buckaroo through the phone line and make him write equations on his hand. I have no idea what I just watched.

There’s also, of course, the Wes Anderson connection, and as Steve Zissou Saturdays kick off next weekend, I thought it would be worth seeing the film from which Anderson borrowed the end credits sequence for The Life Aquatic.

He also, I can see now, borrowed the electrical kiss from this film for Moonrise Kingdom. I’m glad he borrowed these things, because I can understand them in their reappropriated contexts. Here, I have no idea what I just watched.

Buckaroo and his band / fellow spies / sex people have to stop the aliens before they destroy Earth, which all started because a long time ago John Lithgow got flung through a wall by a go-kart, obviously. Christopher Lloyd is one of the aliens and that’s about the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me.

I have no idea what I just watched.

And while Buckaroo is at a club playing that rock and roll that the kids love so much, he hears Ellen Barkin crying so he says ELLEN BARKIN WHY ARE YOU CRYING and she tries to shoot herself while he plays a sad song so she goes to jail and he lets her out, because I guess he has that authority as some guy from the 80s who plays Zeppelin covers at a club, and it turns out she’s the identical twin of his ex-wife, who died in some way that nobody cares enough about to explain. So he hangs out with her for a while and puts her in mortal danger, because the aliens can spit spiders and Ellen Barkin is wearing a dress.

Seriously, what the fuck did I just watch? Jeff Goldblum is in it, too, eerily foreshadowing his future roles in the film of anybody who thinks to ask him. He doesn’t do much apart from dress like a cowboy and say to Buckaroo something to the effect of I’M SORRY I DID EVERYTHING I COULD DO TO SAVE HER and then Buckaroo is sad and almost accidentally orders war with Russia, but it turns out she’s just fine so Jeff Goldblum was trolling him I guess. I have no idea, no idea, no fucking idea what I just watched.

If you have any idea what I just watched, please let me know in the comments.

Because I have no. Idea. What I just watched.

Five stars.

Next up: something I understand. Please.

The Transit of Venus

June 5th, 2012 | Posted by Philip J Reed in books | mason & dixon | thomas pynchon - (1 Comments)

“Oh. And what happen’d to those Transits of Venus?”

“There we have acted more as philosophical Frigates, Ma’am, each detach’d upon his Commission,— whilst the ev’ryday work of the Observatories goes on as always, for the task at Greenwich, as at Paris, is to know every celestial motion so perfectly, that Sailors at last may trust their lives to this Knowledge.”

“Here,” the Col° beams, “more fame attaches to the Transits,— Observers station’d all ’round the world, even in Massachusetts,— Treasuries of all lands pouring forth gold,— ev’ry Astronomer suddenly employ’d,— and all to find a true value for the ‘Earth’s Parallax.’ Why, most of us here in Virginia wouldn’t know a Parallax from a Pinwheel if it came on up and said how-d’ye do.”

“Yet, what a Rage it was! the Transit-of-Venus Wig, that several women were seen wearing upon Broad Street, Husband, do ye remember it? a dark little round Knot against a great white powder’d sphere,—”

“And that Transit-of-Venus Pudding? Same thing, a single black Currant upon a Circular Field of White,—
- and the Sailors, with that miserable song,—

‘Tis time to set sail, [sings the Col°] Farewell, Portsmouth Ale,
Ta-ta to the gay can-tinas, For we’re off, my Girl, to the end of the world
To be there, ere the Tran-sit of Venus.
— She’s the something something,—”
“Goddess of Love,” Martha in a pleasant tho’ impatient soprano,
“— Shining above,
Without a bit of Meanness,
Tho’ we’ll have no more fun till she’s cross’d o’er the Sun,
‘Tis ho, for the Transit of Venus!
[Col° Washington joining her for the Bridge]
Out where the trade winds blow,
Further than Sailors go,
If it’s not Ice and Snow,
‘Twill be hotter than Hell, we know,
So!
Wave to your Dear, stow all your gear, and
Show a bit of Keenness,
Bid Molly adieu,
She isn’t for you,—
For you’re for the Transit of Venus!”

By the last four Bars, they are facing and gazing at one another with an Affection having to do not so much with the Lyric, as with keeping the Harmony, and finishing together.

[p284, Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. Enjoy today the Transit of Venus...an event that won't be repeated until 2117, and which -- long, long ago -- heralded mankind's alleged entry into the Age of Reason.]