|
Welcome. Salutations. Greetings. I present to you the start of things. The first in a series. This is the Beyond Book Club. I am your co-host, Hemingway. |
|
And I am your other co-host, Ayn Rand. We'll be discussing books of all types, determining their merit, their place in the realm of human achievement and more. |
|
We will find their darkest heart. We will reveal it to you. |
|
Our first book is Against The Day by Thomas Pynchon. It lacks, I must say, a certainty in its discoverable moral bases for each character. |
|
Damn it, harpy, that isn't the point. |
|
Excuse me? You can't speak to me like that. |
|
See this gun? The gun says I can. It talks softly to me. It talks clearly. |
|
You're insane, old man. Regardless, Against The Day is nothing more than a series of incidents that the characters walk through, manipulated by Pynchon to achieve some goal or another that has no bearing on everything else for far too long. |
|
Which is his point. He is playing with the older tropes. The classic pulp stories. The old western ideas get merged in. |
|
Westerns? |
|
Indeed! The characters, some of them, have books written about their adventures. They know of them. Other characters know of them. Thus do the characters become both fictional and meta-fictional. |
|
And this is a western how, then? |
|
Simplicity itself. Many western heroes, Buffalo Bill, were both larger than life, fictional, as well as real, meta-fictional. Separation of their duality enhanced lives was often difficult.
|
|
Ahhh, well yes, when looked at like that. I did, I will say, enjoy the use of communism as the fear of the day. It was both timely and wonderfully tongue in cheek. Though the evils of a non-capitalist state are real Pynchon played with it as an allegory to other fears we hold as a society. He must have meant, however, that as truth as well. For only in a free market can men flex their will upon the world and truly become themselves, realized.
|
|
Whatever. Dirty commies. We agree there. Although they were anarchists not communists.
|
|
Clearly he meant communists and only used anarchists to make the system of freedom look sillier.
|
|
Whatever, bitch. Still, the book was long. |
|
What's wrong with a lengthy look at life?
|
|
It wastes my time, woman! I can appreciate the structure but must ask: Was it needed? Were there not better, most succinct ways to craft this tale of man against man and man against nature? Man. Nature. Old enemies. Old allies.
|
|
I suppose. Still, it took the time to discover itself. It meandered at times, to be sure, but in acceptable ways. |
|
Also, it has a talking dog. |
|
Which is too fantastical to be dealt with.
|
|
Why? It's a dog. It talks. Where is your problem, woman?
|
|
|
|
I submit that you speak. I submit it as proof against your impossibilities. |
|
|
|
A dog. A hound. Shut up and bark, bitch.
|
|
|
|
Fetch my slippers, harpy.
|
|
That's it! This is the end!
|
|
Yes, let us conclude that this is the end of the review. The ending. No more shall be spoken. Until next time.
|
|
You old drunk bastard. There won't be a next time! I quit!
|
|
My shotgun and your contract say otherwise. I have three. Three barrels of truth now against you. Make your play.
|
|
|
|
As you should. This has been the Beyond Book Club. I'm Hemingway, as if you did not know.
|
|
I'm Ayn Rand. And I hate this.
|
|
|
