I’ve been prepping myself for Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Intimidation, mostly stemming from the book’s history, is running high: in 1974, it had been considered for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, but eleven members of the board vetoed the decision, calling Gravity’s Rainbow “unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene.” (Sound familiar? Interestingly enough, the Pulitzer board didn’t hand out prizes in the fiction category in 1974.) My failure to get through a Pynchon novel—I’d previously attempted Mason & Dixon—doesn’t really stem from the books themselves, but rather from how they’re often described. I can deal with “turgid” and “obscene” books, but “unreadable” and “overwritten” isn’t exactly high praise. In truth, I didn’t find Mason & Dixon to be overly difficult; I was perfectly content to just let the book wash over me without trying to grasp all the details. I was actually enjoying the book—I kept telling myself that it wasn’t as bad as people said—but my fear got the better of me: instead of focusing on the book, all I could think about was how difficult Pynchon is supposed to be. So, after three chapters, I set the book aside, and not without a bit of relief.

But how does one actually go about reading Pynchon? Like James Joyce, Pynchon is mythical in stature: he’s revered for his wordplay, his originality, and the sheer “braininess” of his books. If you’re not careful, you may get carried away, hopelessly lost and infuriated. I’ve been toying with the idea of just taking the plunge, of trying to get through Gravity’s Rainbow in one weekend. It worked when I read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, I reasoned, so I didn’t see why it wouldn’t work in this case.

Now I’m not sure if tearing through Gravity’s Rainbow in one weekend would be the ideal way to go. Foucault’s Pendulum isn’t excessively difficult or convoluted; it just requires you to get through two hundred pages or so before it starts to reveal its secrets. Gravity’s Rainbow, on the other hand, seems like a completely different monster—a post-Ulysses, if you will. So I’ve been gathering reading aids in preparation for Pynchon’s opus: SparkNotes, wikis, concordances, essays, and .pdfs of notes pertaining to the book. It may turn out that all this is unnecessary—or maybe I’m just making things harder than they have to be—but considering the book’s supposed level of difficulty, it can’t hurt to be prepared. I’m heeding the lesson I learned with my aborted Ulysses attempt: reading doesn’t always guarantee understanding.

While John le Carré and Ian Fleming were fighting the Cold War with their patented brand of spy novels, the Soviet Union was fighting back with its own version of the genre, albeit on a much smaller, less convoluted scale.

The Soviet Union had a version of the spy genre, too, with its own peculiarities. One of them stemmed from the fact that in Russian, there are two words for “spy.” The first is close to the English word: shpion, which means a bad guy working for the dark side. The other is razvedchik, which usually means a good guy, or at least “our son of a bitch.” The deeds of Russian razvedchiki during World War II were glorified in many books and movies, but usually the plot was very simple: a smart Russian spy against a lot of dumb Germans.

Yulian Semyonov, the only serious Russian rival of le Carré and his Western colleagues, took a radically different approach. In a series of novels, he described the career of German colonel Otto von Stirlitz, who was actually the Russian spy Maxim Isayev. In Semyonov’s books, the Germans are not always cruel and they are certainly never dumb. One of them, Seventeen Moments of Spring, describes an attempt by Britain and the United States to enter into peace talks with Nazi Germany behind the backs of their Soviet allies; the book was adapted into a 1973 miniseries that earned the unconditional love of Russian television viewers. Come to think of it, this was rather odd: the series features lots and lots of dialogue and almost no elements of a typical spy movie, such as car chases, shootouts, and gadgets; instead, the struggle between Stirlitz and his enemies is mostly intellectual. Semyonov was not very happy with the liberties that director Tatyana Lioznova took with his text. But there is little doubt that it was she who immortalized the book.

The art of seduction according to the marquise de Pompadour:

Precisely because the seduction [of King Louis XV] worked, however, it repays close study. By deromanticizing seduction, Pompadour provides us with a handy map to help us obtain what we desire. Pompadour is, in many respects, the matriarch of the relationship guru, except, unlike today’s men and women’s magazines, Pompadour’s stock-in-trade is not dull platitudes. Pompadour instead offers a subtle lesson into human weakness and insecurity, and how knowledge of these can be used to seduce others. It is dangerous knowledge, but it is knowledge nevertheless.

For Pompadour, a successful seduction can overshadow the means used to obtain it. Now, this is obviously untrue when one is hoping that a seduction will lead to a stable marriage, because manipulation of the kind Pompadour counseled will poison any long-term relationship; Pompadour’s advice, however, is quite useful for short-term relationships.

During high school, college, and the early years of one’s working life, few men and women are actually seeking out a partner for life. Where Pompadour’s advice is helpful is in the pursuit of one-night stands or good-for-now relationships. In these trysts, does it really matter that a certain level of emotional manipulation is involved? I should hope not, for to expect every romantically-inclined young adult to pursue their lust within Kantian constraints is certain to result in an unspeakably sub-optimal number of such relationships. After all, as Pompadour reminds us, it is the cruelty of eros that elevates it above mere pleasure and makes it sublime.

I was never planning on reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion—I don’t think it’ll tell me anything I don’t already know—but this review, from the Times Literary Supplement, has made me consider giving the book a shot.

Where I think Dawkins goes wrong is that, like Henry V after Agincourt, he does not seem to realize the extent to which his side has won. Setting aside the rise of Islam in Europe, the decline of serious Christian belief among Europeans is so widely advertised that Dawkins turns to the United States for most of his examples of unregenerate religious belief. He attributes the greater regard for religion in the U.S. to the fact that Americans have never had an established Church, an idea he may have picked up from Tocqueville. But although most Americans may be sure of the value of religion, as far as I can tell they are not very certain about the truth of what their own religion teaches. According to a recent article in the New York Times, American evangelists are in despair over a poll that showed that only four percent of American teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. The spread of religious toleration provides evidence of the weakening of religious certitude. Most Christian groups have historically taught that there is no salvation without faith in Christ. If you are really sure that anyone without such faith is doomed to an eternity of hell, then propagating that faith and suppressing disbelief would logically be the most important thing in the world—far more important than any merely secular virtues like religious toleration. Yet religious toleration is rampant in America. No one who publicly expressed disrespect for any particular religion could be elected to a major office.

Even though American atheists might have trouble winning elections, Americans are fairly tolerant of us unbelievers. My many good friends in Texas who are professed Christians do not even try to convert me. This might be taken as evidence that they don’t really mind if I spend eternity in hell, but I prefer to think (and Baptists and Presbyterians have admitted it to me) that they are not all that certain about hell and heaven. I have often heard the remark (once from an American priest) that it is not so important what one believes; the important thing is how we treat each other. Of course, I applaud this sentiment, but imagine trying to explain “not important what one believes” to Luther or Calvin or St. Paul. Remarks like this show a massive retreat of Christianity from the ground it once occupied, a retreat that can be attributed to no new revelation, but only to a loss of certitude.

“It’s not so important what one believes”? That statement is more than a retreat; it’s akin to conceding victory to non-Christians—this American priest is essentially telling people that they can still go to heaven even if they don’t believe in Christ. Which begs the question: why believe in the first place? Yet the American priest illustrates a larger problem, which has long plagued Christianity (as well as other religions): adherents can’t seem to make up their minds and settle on one way of interpreting biblical doctrine. But if it comes down to interpretation—which it always does—then no one version of Christianity, or any other religion, can be considered right or wrong.

Whatever one thinks of the Muslims who blow themselves up in crowded cities in Europe or Israel or fly planes into buildings in the U.S., who could dispute that the certainty of their faith had something to do with it? George W. Bush and many others would have us believe that terrorism is a distortion of Islam, and that Islam is a religion of peace. Of course, it is good policy to say this, but statements about what “Islam is” make little sense. Islam, like all other religions, was created by people, and there are potentially as many different versions of Islam as there are people who profess to be Muslims. (The same remarks apply to [Terry] Eagleton’s highly personal account of what Christianity “is.”) I don’t know on what ground one can say that a peaceable, well-intentioned person like Abdus Salam was any more a true Muslim than the murderous holy warriors of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, the clerics throughout the world of Islam who incite hatred and violence, and those Muslims who demonstrate against supposed insults to their faith, but not against the atrocities committed in its name. (Incidentally, Abdus Salam regarded himself as a devout Muslim, but he belonged to a sect that most Muslims consider heretical, and for years was not allowed to return to Pakistan.) Dawkins treats Islam as just another deplorable religion, but there is a difference. The difference lies in the extent to which religious certitude lingers in the Islamic world and in the harm it does. Richard Dawkins’s even-handedness is well-intentioned, but it is misplaced. I share his lack of respect for all religions, but in our times it is folly to disrespect them all equally.

I’m not sure if it’s folly to disrespect all religions equally, since Christianity can be just as violent and dangerous as Islam. Religious extremism, culminating in terrorism and murder, isn’t something that’s only found in the Islamic world.

In keeping with my pledge to read more science fiction, I checked out Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau when I went to the library yesterday. I’d also wanted to pick up Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose—the only Eco novel I haven’t read—and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, but I decided that my brain would probably implode if I read Pynchon, Eco, and Dostoyevsky without any space in between. I also balked at the thought of trying to read The Brothers Karamazov in three weeks or less; it was almost eight hundred pages long, set in very small typeface. So I slid it back on the shelf, albeit reluctantly; you see, I like intimidating books. Hence, Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Pynchon kick my ass the second time around.

I’ve also been feeling the pull of Roland and his ka-tet, so I picked up Stephen King’s Song of Susannah, the sixth book in the Dark Tower series. It’s been a few years since I read Wolves of the Calla, but the nice thing about the Dark Tower books is that it’s easy to pick up the story again. I don’t remember much of what happened in Wolves of the Calla, though I seem to remember being a bit disappointed by it. I suppose I liked it, but maybe I didn’t like it as much as Wizard and Glass. That’s my favorite book in the series—and one of my favorite King novels in general—so I can’t imagine how he’s going to top it. I don’t exactly have high hopes for Song of Susannah, but I’d like to get to the final novel sometime this year—that’s the book I have high hopes for. It better kick ass.

I also grabbed Javier Sierra’s The Secret Supper, which has been on my wishlist for a while, but now I’m not sure if I’ll get around to it. It looks like a bastardization of Eco and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which, now that I think about it, isn’t something I find particularly appealing. I’m no longer on a “religion-is-false” trip, so that’s probably why I’m not really interested in it. I’ll likely give the book a fair shot, but if it sucks fifty pages in, I’m done.

And I was surprised to find Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics In Calamity Physics, which a lot of people were talking about last year. I hadn’t cared about the book even after it made a lot of best-of lists last year, but now I think it looks interesting. Sixteen-year-old Blue van Meer is “a brainy, deadpan, and preternaturally erudite girl who, after travelling from one remote academic outpost to another with her professor father (see ‘Gareth van Meer’), has a head crammed full of literary, philosophical, and scientific knowledge.” I like smart people, so Blue seems like she’d be a fun character to read about.

And in other library-related news: if any of you hail from my neck of the woods, hie thee to this book sale.

“There are hundreds and hundreds of books in this collection, enough to fill an entire storage unit, and almost all of them have some value beyond just being a used book,” says Dale Lashnits, who’s coordinated a book sale at the Aurora Central Library Community Room, 14949 East Alameda Parkway; it takes place on January twentieth from noon to five p.m. and January twenty-first from twelve-thirty to six p.m.

The collection was donated to the library by the John and Elizabeth Battles family and includes everything from books on Civil War history, world history, art books, cookbooks, fiction, nonfiction—even a book of animated artwork that ended up as a Disney film and one that picks apart Adolf Hitler’s psyche. “There’s a book on Rembrandt that’s priced at $1,300,” adds Lashnits. “The range is going to be anything from forty cents a book to $1,300, so there’s a good chance that there’s going to be something for everybody, and there are going to be some good deals available to people. I think all of us who have been pricing these books have been underpricing.” He’s not lying—that Rembrandt book is actually worth several thousand dollars, so the library is practically giving the thing away.

I’ll see you there.

I’m pretty cynical to begin with, but even I don’t have the kind of bleak nihilism it takes to enjoy a book like Userlands, the new fiction anthology edited by Dennis Cooper. (And this from someone who, in his darkest moments, reads the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.) Here, angst reigns supreme, often spiced up by unerotic sex and characters who relish their own sense of worthlessness. The stories aren’t necessarily boring, but they often read like pale imitations of Bret Easton Ellis; his influence runs through most of these pages.

In the end, Userlands is a victim of its own aspirations: it aims to be a modern alternative to the “gentrified, conservative, and economics-driven” state of publishing—and in this respect, it certainly succeeds—but many of its contributors are so self-conscious, often opting for manipulation rather than any sense of emotion, that their writing immediately becomes stale and cringe-inducing. Yes, the world is a nasty, dirty place, filled with creeps and losers, but that doesn’t mean I want a book like Userlands bathing me in society’s come.

Henry Alford gives me yet another reason to hate the New York Times Book Review.

From Richard Dawkins’s Memealot: The Selfish Gene Musical

This book coined a new term: meme.
Or “me-me” for those with the selfish gene.

Me me me me me me: me!
Me me-me me me-me me me me.

There’s no “I” in team
But there’s “me” and I’m

(Singer rips off his clothes to reveal a leotard.) … A miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!

With this essay, which is probably the stupidest and most insipid waste of space I’ve ever seen, the New York Times Book Review has lost its last two readers.

Scott Turow on the lynching of Saddam Hussein and the role of capital punishment in a civilized society:

As to Saddam, I would argue that from a very restricted legal standpoint, his execution has little to do with the central juristic question of capital punishment, which asks whether it is ever right or moral for the state to take the life of a citizen as the price for violating the law. Saddam was not condemned for his misconduct as an ordinary Iraqi citizen. He was punished for his lawless abuse of state power. His execution raises the singular question of how to respond when a state actor runs amok. This distinction is what led the Israelis in 1962 to execute Adolph Eichmann, who had supervised the Nazi death camps, even though their constitution generally prohibits capital punishment and has kept them from executing even captured terrorists. But the manner in which Saddam’s execution was carried out proves yet again why capital punishment is always a parlous enterprise.

[...]

The only rigorous justification for the death penalty, I believe, is as a symbol of moral restoration. For ultimate evil, the argument goes, there must be ultimate punishment, because a society needs to make as bold and emphatic a statement as possible that some crimes go beyond the boundaries of what we can envisage as human.

The problem, however, is that once we accept that justification for capital punishment, it must be carried out in a way that preserves its force as a moral statement. We must faultlessly identify what constitutes ultimate evil, as opposed to some lesser infraction, and we must ensure that whoever is punished is guilty without question.

Of course, the reality of capital punishment in the United States is that it is still imposed with haunting randomness. Variables such as where the crime occurs (death sentences are more frequent in rural areas), the wealth of the jurisdiction (the sheer expense of death prosecutions occasionally deters them), the race of the victim (throughout the U.S., whites and blacks are sentenced to death far more often for killing white people than for killing black people), the native inclinations of the prosecutor, and the skill and resources of the defense all contribute to whether or not the death penalty is sought and imposed.

Not to mention the most disquieting fact, that horrible crimes often propel a rush to judgment that has led 123 Americans to be legally absolved of crimes for which they were initially sentenced to death. Because the law fails in these ways rigorously to identify ultimate evil, the value of the death penalty as a moral statement is largely vitiated in practice.

With 2007 marking the 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth, the Independent pays tribute to a poet, painter, and printmaker whose works continue to influence modern literature, from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy to Tracy Chevalier’s forthcoming novel Burning Bright.

The fact is that Blake did not need physical space or the sprawl of landscape in which to flourish as an artist and writer. The ever-expanding worlds he created were germinated inside his own head. He could live there; he could travel quite as far as he needed across and through those imaginary worlds whenever he wished to do so. Those who have read his prolific, rambling, and often almost incoherent prophetic books will witness for themselves just how far he soared between heaven and earth and back again.

Meghan O’Rourke argues that plagiarism is less about originality than authors doing their own research.

It may be less obvious that issues of labor lurk behind our anxieties when it comes to fiction. But even the [Ian] McEwan affair, when you think about it, boils down to a concern that he cut corners at someone else’s expense. At this juncture, McEwan has published roughly a dozen works of fiction, most of them critically acclaimed, and is revered for his distinctive prose style. In the case of Atonement, it can hardly be said that the presence of two cribbed passages, comprising a few hundred words, profoundly alters our perception of McEwan’s overall literary “originality.” For one thing, Atonement is hundreds of pages long. For another, McEwan didn’t exactly hide his borrowing: Andrews is acknowledged in the book. Why, exactly, do we care if a few sentences resemble a historical source? And what do we think would be gained from his having painstakingly substituted different words from those Andrews had used? The answer, clearly, has to do with work; it seems unfair that Andrews had to sit at her desk and painstakingly consider how to describe cleaning a soldier’s wounds, while McEwan could merely sit down and effectively copy out her sentences, moving on to the rest of his story (while getting paid more than she did, presumably).

I often wonder why people are so quick to defend McEwan. Why should we hold him to a different standard than anyone else? Just because he’s a bestselling novelist doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get away with plagiarism.