The Puget News

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.”

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The big book approacheth! If you weren’t able to figure out my little graphical hint in last week’s post, the first big book we’re going to read as a group on “The Puget News” is Thomas Pynchon’s new 1,120 page monster, “Against the Day”. It’s being released a week from today and has a great pre-order price of $21.00 (list price of $35.00) at Amazon.com (just click the image above to place your order. Something resemblng a phone book will show up on your doorstep soon thereafter).

A couple of you are signed up to read this with me already, but here is the tentative plan. We will get the books here no later than 23rd and take roughly a month to read it through. The goal is to finish by Christmas and then to go out and celebrate when everyone is back in Seattle from Christmas break. Everyone, feel free to join us! This is not a book to read alone - I promise.

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November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the month where thousands of aspiring novelists take advantage of the seasonally poor weather (especially here in the Puget Sound), trade in their self-censoring generally overly-judgmental attitudes, and focus purely on the production of writing a novel - no matter how bad it is. Hellbent on the production of 2,000 words a day, these folks labor towards the completion of a 175-page (50,000 word) novel while their progress is shared, encouraged, and tracked at the NaNoWriMo website.

It’s a worthy endeavor, a task to which I aspire - perhaps next year - and the folks I know who have participated have lauded the benefits of it freeing their creative processes.

The reason I bring this up is that I’ve been following Matthew Baldwin’s attempt over at the ever-hilarious Defective Yeti to read “Moby Dick” this month. I don’t know if the clever creation of the “NoNoReMo” moniker is his, but since he’s the first person I’ve seen use it, and I could find no central “NoNoReMo” website using a cursory Google search, I’m giving him credit. His “Moby Dick” reading excursions are frequently blogged and always contain hilarious observations about the experience. So far, I’m harboring doubts as to whether Matthew will be successful - he hasn’t updated the attempt since November 6th but I love what he’s produced so far - even it means that “Moby Dick” moves further down my priority list of “Books to Read”.

The reason I bring all of this up is that several people, including myself (you know who you are), have decided to collectively read a big novel coming out near the end of this month. While we have no need to tie ourselves to a 1-month goal on this, it would be best not to drag this out. We’ll probably aim to finish by Christmas or New Year. I don’t want to write about it longer than that and even indulgent readers would have their patience tested.

I’ll announce what the book is in the coming days so that anybody who wants to partake can do so (although the above image should be a pretty major hint - nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Getting people to read gigantic books is always a goal of mine though, so if I were you, I’d expect to see this exercise repeated with various works in the future. Feel free to suggest things you’d like to read and discuss online.

“The Puget News” is proud to introduce our first author interview! Ryan Boudinot, author of “The Littlest Hitler” was gracious enough to talk about his darkly comical collection of short stories, channel a little Yoda, and tell me which dead people he’d like to kick it with.

Just a reminder, if you like what you’re reading here, please You’ll get notified when this blog gets updated.

————————— * First of all, thank you for taking the time to be the first interview for “The Puget News.” I’m excited to have this opportunity.

As am I. As am I.

* Why did you choose “The Littlest Hitler” as the headlining story for this collection? Was it purely for shock value or was there something you felt that story embodied which encompassed the other stories in the collection?

There were two reasons. One, I felt like it had earned the title. “The Littlest Hitler” is the last story I wrote when I was finishing my MFA at Bennington College. I remember feeling like it was my reward from the muses for working hard for two years, and that the story would somehow take care of me. It’s the oldest story in the collection.

Second, it’s the most widely-published story in the collection. High school debate team kids recite it in tournaments. It’s been translated into Italian and published in Italy. A drama club in Seattle staged a great version of it. So in a purely pragmatic way, it made sense to title the whole book after a story that’s more recognized than the others.

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“Seven Types of Ambiguity” is a somewhat over-ambitious novel about Simon, an unemployed and melancholy elementary school teacher, obsessed with a failed relationship from some 10 years prior. In an act of desperation, Simon reasserts himself within his former girlfriend’s life through an unconventional act - the very temporary kidnapping of her child - with somewhat bizarre consequences. This event, which ultimately turns out to be quite harmless and misunderstood, forces the central characters to confront, re-examine, and tell their own stories. Hearing their perception of the events and their subsequent responses, counter-balanced by the perceptions of others, is the real joy of this book. This is a dark story with deeply flawed characters, all building towards a very satisfactory “tie up all the loose-ends (except for one - in case of a sequel)” kind of way.

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