Can Anyone Else Really Write Like This?
I've been re-reading Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, and I've been astonished anew at his verbal virtuosity. Here's how he describes astronomer Charles Mason's first encounter with his future wife at the blessing of "The Octuple Gloucester" (a cheese nearly four tons in weight and ten feet tall) after it escapes its carriage and bears down a hill on Mason:
"Ahr! Mercy!" He threw his arms in front of his Face and succumb'd before the cylindrickal Onslaught, with a peculiar Horror at having been singl'd out for Misadventure... The Victim of a Cheese malevolent, being his last thought before abrupt Rescue by way of a stout shove, preceded by an energetick Rustling of Taffeta,-- as he went toppling onto his face, grass up his Nose, hearing thro' his Belly the homicidal Ponderosity roll by without the interruption of a flatten'd Mason to divert it from its Destiny.
As he arose, slowly, holding his head, blowing out alternate Nostrils, her Voice reach'd him. "Were it Night-time, Sir, I'd say you were out Star-Gazing." She put upon her r the same vigorous Edge as his Father on a difficult day,-- withal, "Star-Gazing" in those parts was a young man's term for masturbating. He might have said something then to regret forever, but her looks had him stupefied. If she was not, like Susannah, a Classick English Rose, neither was she any rugged Blossom of the Heath. He found himself staring at the shape of her mouth, her Lips slightly apart, in an Inquiry that just fail'd to be a Smile..
It's what, I suppose, they would call a "cute meet" in a romantic comedy. A bit later, there's this description of Mason's father's thoughts about their relationship:
"What happens to men sometimes," his Father wants to tell Charlie, "is that one day all at once they'll understand how much they love their children, as absolutely as a child gives away its own love, and the terrible terms that come with that,-- and it proves too much to bear, and they'll not want it, any of it, and back away in fear. And that's how these miserable situations arise,-- in particular between fathers and sons. The Father too afraid, the Child too innocent. Yet if he could survive the first onrush of fear, and be bless'd with enough Time to think, he might find a way through..." Hoping Charlie might have look'd at him and ask'd, "Are you and I finding a way through?"
That's what happened to my father. He just survived that first onrush of fear, but he wasn't blessed with enough time to think. In the end, he was too afraid, I was too innocent, and we never found a way through.
Passages like these, even more than the sprawling accomplishment of his novels, show so clearly what a great writer Pynchon is. They reveal stylistic mastery and emotional power--style and substance. They make me angry to think of journeyman scribblers like Neal Stephenson who coyly repeats others' misguided comparisons of his writing to Pynchon's. I would say "In his dreams," but based on his writing, I suspect that even his dreams aren't that richly imaginative.
8:01:58 AM 
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