Thomas Pynchon and Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014
#7, 2014 Skandies
Since I did not end up watching a movie all the way through (or even 10% of the way through) during my holiday weekend, I succumbed to a fit of rebellion and watched this one over the course of the past few weeknights. Clearly, I love sticking it to the man and what have you.
About a month into the school year I asked my sophomore classes to choose a theme for the second semester—I figured that the students would be more engaged if we were looking at texts that were relevant to their interests. The reason I asked the question so early is that I wanted to allow myself time to read through any books that looked like good candidates for the unit but which I hadn’t already read. Second period indicated an interest in conspiracy theories—the kids these days love their memes, and “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” was in its heyday—so I tried to think of what might be fitting content were that to win. Who wrote books of accepted literary merit that incorporated conspiracies as a key element? The first name that came to mind was Thomas Pynchon. The problem was that I had tried three different Pynchon novels and found them all impenetrable. I’d really been looking forward to Mason & Dixon in particular—it had sounded like the sort of thing I would be into, but after fifty pages I couldn’t take any more. But I’d heard that The Crying of Lot 49 was supposed to be a lot more accessible than the rest of his stuff, so I got a copy of that. And then proceeded not to even open it as my workload immediately became overwhelming. (It’s like a line out of Dr. Strangelove: “I don’t have time for books—I’m an English teacher!”)
And I guess that after giving up on Mason & Dixon I had stopped keeping track of Pynchon’s career, because I had no idea what to expect when I started up this movie—the title didn’t ring any bells. It’s one of those films that throw a bunch of stuff at you with no introduction, so you only start to piece together what was going on in the early scenes after several reels have passed. “Who’s that guy? Who’s she? How are they related? So, wait, is he a doctor? Or, no, is that just a nickname? Hang on, he has a medical office, so… oh, but he’s running a private eye agency from there. Are those guys friends or enemies? Wait, is that Martin Short? Is Martin Short still a thing?” There’s a real Big Lebowski vibe to this one, with a hippie stoner ricocheting around L.A. encountering eccentric character after eccentric character; it’s not as consistently comedic, and at times sitting through it was kind of a slog, but it did throw in a few little oddball moments that won some laughs. (Most of these were reaction shots, but I was also pretty amused by the notes the protagonist makes in his casebook.) And with all the shadowy organizations and labyrinthine interconnections among disparate characters, I found myself thinking, hmm, this is actually kind of Pynchonesque! Then up popped the end credits with a title screen reading “Based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon”, and I thought, oh, really Pynchonesque then. So, I guess this has to count as my best experience with Pynchon… but it still wasn’t all that good.
