Thomas Pynchon’s new novel takes a beating in the New York Times

Michiko Kikutani, lead literary critic for the New York Times, has focused her criticism on the new Thomas Pynchon novel, “Against the Day” today:

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.

For anyone familiar with Michiko Kakutani, you’ll know that her negative reviews are how where she has made her reputation. In fact, she parlayed her punditry into a Pulitzer back in 1998. The Pulitzer committee mentioned her “fearless and authoritative” judgments.

I do find her fearless and generally accurate in her criticism, but I also believe she polarizes and sensationalizes - both to the detriment of her reading audience. Her arguments take little of the structure of balanced argument. Instead, she picks “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” and then proceeds to create an argument in that direction while glossing counter-argument. I have no doubt that she is correct that this work by Pynchon may indeed be overwrought and not his best work, but then again,who would suggest that “Crying of Lot 49,” “Mason and Dixon,” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” isn’t a fairly tall order? While Kakutani writes well and tends to make some interesting points, her polarization might as well be a “hot or not” gossip column for the literary world: “Oh my God, have you seen Thomas Pynchon’s new bloated monstrosity? Uh-uh girlfriend, not gonna cut it.”

I haven’t read “Against the Day” yet (although my order did just ship from Amazon.com and we’re going to read it for this paper) but here’s something I know: Thomas Pynchon at his worst is still better than 99.999% of the writers alive today. Would you know that from reading this review from Michuko Kakutani? Absolutely not. The problem with her reviews is that they are argumentative for the sake of being argumentative, with no real criticism to help a learned audience know whether or not this book has something in it for them to enjoy. I happen to enjoy huge books, even ones with thin plots, as long as there are enough beautiful moments in the writing or enough little sub-stories to satiate. Pynchon’s new book might be my cup of tea but there’s no real way for me to know based on this review.

So Ms. Kakutani, I will be reading Thomas Pynchon’s new book to see for myself what it’s like. I will post my own thoughts here on this blog and I will likely find your criticisms largely correct, but I will also endeavor to help the book find it’s right audience. That’s my goal here at The Puget News - get the right books into the right peoples’ hands.

And for those of you who’ve read this far, I have a little treat. I put together an list of links about Michiko Kakutani over at del.icio.us. I strongly recommend the Slate article called “Assessing Michiko Kakutani” by Ben Yagoda and the very humorous “I am Michiko Kakutani” by Colin McEnroe over at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you and getting your opinions in the comments and feedback. Feed your head!