Bookforum recently published a tribute to Thomas Pynchon called "Pynchon from A to V," written by critic and Pynchon maniac Gerald Howard. Most Pynchon fans discover that their love dare not speak its name because when it does, it instantly labels one as a literary snob and smartypants. Like experience in armed combat, love of Pynchon and Gravity's Rainbow is best delivered in the format of memoir, and Howard's affectionate tale of his own Pynchon obsession inspired me to reconsider mine.Let's first get the unavoidable and unfortunate realities out the way: Gravity's Rainbow is dense and unfriendly. Pynchon's characters appear from nowhere, have bizzare names, and disappear without a trace. Poof! Gone. Most vexing of all, reading Pynchon in general, and GR in particular, requires wrangling zillions of intricate conspiracies within conspiracies, many of which seem to have no bearing on the Point of the Book, whatever the heck that may be.Howard's GR experience was similar to mine, a kill-or-be-killed, finish-or-die-trying affair. I read GR when I was 23. It was a time of confusion, bluster, distrust, cut with confidence that my recently-acquired BA in English had given me unique insight into the world; in other words, I was GR's ideal reader. It could be argued that few readers who aren't young, male lit majors would subject themselves to a 760 pages of punishment thinly masked as intrigue. Who else would have the faith, or time, to read and re-read page after page, memorizing seemingly pointless details because any detail may suddenly become somehow relevant? At the time I read GR, I had just moved to a big city that seemed populated by the very people who populated Pynchon's pages — shadowy people with sinister secret lives. Perhaps their shadowy, sinister appearance was a result of the fact that I didn't know anyone, had a terrible job, no girlfriend, no band and very little money. Moreover, I didn't know what I wanted to be doing, who I wanted to be. Like the protagonist Tyrone Slothrop, I was filled with unease and concern. And yet at the same time I was having TONS of fun. Doing absolutely nothing except marveling at the mysteries of everything around me. I loved it, but I wanted it all to end, and I wanted to figure it out — all at the same time. And the book! The book provided a very faint hope of actually understanding something, anything. Immersed in the world of GR, all of life was a puzzle to solve, a knot to unravel, a refined and glamorized version of my own world. Slothrop was me: a confused mix of unease, hope, and good times. Of course, vast sections of the book nearly crushed me. I often completely forgot what had happened on the previous page, or who a character was. I must have re-read enough pages to read the book twice.But I was propelled by the illuminating, invigorating passages that laid bare the elements that so many recent bachelors of arts seek to understand — the impersonal forces at the heart of civilization, the greedy corporations governing our daily lives, the evil truth behind the happy facade. Pynchon brings these things to life in passages of overwhelming, all-encompassing knowledge (nowadays imitated by the likes of JFranz, DFW, etc), and within them exists a character quite familiar to my younger self — a hopeful, curious guy who wants to know the answers but can do no more than uncover mysteries of greater magnitude.Readers rebuffed by its complexity might argue that GR's greatness is a collective delusion of the few readers willing to endure the punishment, the endless parade of bizzarely-named characters, the narrative digressions leading to further digressions that ultimately become the narrative, the problem of the protagonist disappearing somewhere around page 500 — the list goes on. To them I say this: You really need to make it to the end to understand. Better yet, don't expect to really understand anything. Then you'll be ready to start.
Author: Doug LeMoine
Quesadilla
People insist on inventing new pronunciations for this word, god knows why. I bet you could find entire regions in which the predominant pronunciation of this word is kway-sa-dilya. "Can I get one kway-sa-dilya, and a side of ranch dressing, please?" To be sure, quesadilla is what linguists call a "loan" or "borrowed" word. In most cases, borrowings are modified so that they conform to the pronunciation rules of the new language, but there's something especially insulting about mispronouncing a word as seemingly widespread as quesadilla. I would feel way more sympathetic to someone who stumbles through "smoked trout nicoise salad with hearts of romaine and dijon viniagrette" than a word that is on the goddam Taco Bell menu. The truly mysterious thing is that the people who mispronounce "quesadilla" are inevitably people who look like they probably know the Taco Bell menu by heart. I can see why people are inclined to say "kweh-sa" or "kway-sa," because "qu" is "kwa" in words like "quiet" or "question." And I can understand why people of French-Canadian descent may be inclined to pronounce the "qu" as "ka" or "keh." I guess I can also understand saying "dilla" as "dilya" or "dillah" rather than "diya," but I'm relatively sure that these same people pronounce "tortilla" correctly. But maybe they don't. Maybe they say "tortilya." When you string all of the mispronunciations together, and you get things like kway-sa-dilya, or kah-sa-dillah, it just makes you sad for the state of civilization, for the future of language, for the likelihood that things that matter will be further eroded by people who simply don't pay attention. On the other hand, it's also a perfect example of people voting with their feet, or their mouths as the case may be. Which is interesting yet terrifying, as always.
Old Amsterdam
Ahh, Amsterdam. Sometimes I wish there was a General Foods International Coffee flavor that would transport me back to those gauzy days on the banks of the Amstel — the cool fall breeze, the Nightwatch, the hazy coffeeshop afternoons. Actually, to faithfully recreate those simpler times, a single cup of coffee would have to knock me on my ass and erase my memory for a week. Furthermore, it would have to make me feel like I'd been lobotomized, and send my life into a terrible, slow-motion tailspin. It would also have to empty my bank account, force me to live on nan bread from the Indian restaurant next to my crappy London apartment. (If not for the kindness and infinitely tolerant understanding of Karla Betts, this era of my life would have been nothing more than a platter of cheese cubes drifting silently past me). While it can't faithfully recreate the Amsterdam experience of my vague recollection, there is a cheese which has a way of taking me back to a more ideal place. It's called Old Amsterdam. It's in the gouda family, and it has got a nice salty bite balanced with the requisite gouda creaminess. Does it lead me to spend 72 straight hours in the basement lounge of a hostel? No. But it tastes nice with crispy crackers, tomatoes, and olive oil, and it doesn't give me uncontrollable cravings for falafel that I can't afford.
Spanish Idiazabal
I liked smoked cheese because it reminds me of the smoking destruction often wrought by my favorite basketball team, the Kansas Jayhawks. Each winter, I ingest a healthy cross-section of smoked food — from Cyclone flambe to charred Sooner, from grilled and skewered Missouri Tiger on a bed of greens to tenderly fricasseed Cornhusker with a side of roasted Aggie. This spring's offerings were unusually plentiful and toothsome; during an epic late March weekend, I was treated to slow-roasted Blue Devil a mere 48 hours before feasting upon seared Arizona Wildcat. The Wildcat, I must admit, was especially delicious considering the cruel, terrible, ruthless, unforgettable surprise grilling he had administered on a legendary Jayhawk team in the round of 16 in March 1997. In comparison to these smoky delights, Spanish Idiazabal hardly merits mention. Yes, it is much nicer than many smoked Jacks and goudas that have unceremoniously paraded through my little cheese drawer, but still, compared to the deep, rich smokiness emitted by a Kansas State Wildcat torched by indiscriminate aerial assault by Kansas guards, it might as well be Cheez-Whiz.
Farmer Steve's Goaty Cheese Spread
After a long sunny Sunday spent assembling bee hives and running, I sampled Slide Ranch Steve's latest cheese effort, a tangy, salty cheese spread made from adding rennet to the milk of Slide Ranch goats. Most farmer's cheese is made with archaic methods that often require a bit of brute force. For instance, I often made cheese by heating up a few gallons of goat milk on a rickety old gas stove and adding a bunch of vinegar just before it boiled. This method works, sort of, but you get what you pay for. The milk heats unevenly, so you waste lots of curd; the milk on the bottom often burns, making it taste, well, burnt; and the milk near the bottom gets too hot and makes the rest of it taste sour. Steve made his by adding rennet to fresh goat milk and then spicing it with a little salt and chili powder. The result: a safe, satisfying cheese that would never, ever offend. Meg Ryan in cheese form. Fluffy, creamy, easy-going. Highly recommended on nacho chips. Best enjoyed during the late afternoon of sunny, breezy Sundays while sitting on rustic cabin porches. Absolutely must be eaten while drinking Black Butte Porter.
Tomme d'Abondance (French raw milk)
All those froofy-sounding French gruyeres tend to inspire patriotic disgust for the very sincere self-importance of everything French, even though they rarely disappoint, taste-wise. My problem with this gruyere is that it demands too much from me. I look at it in my little cheese drawer, and it practically demands that it be served in a particular way, at a particular time of day, with a particular attitude, on a particular platter: "Eh! Monsieur! You're not going to slice me on zis cutting board, are you? The one on which you just sliced zat apple?" Umm, yeah, I didn't buy you so that you could make me feel inadequate. What is preventing me from grating you into a fine powder and feeding you to the yappy American mongrel with which I live? Eh? Eh? In any case, I sometimes appreciate the extra work involved in making this cheese happy. So what if it doesn't go well with Lagunitas Dog Town Pale Ale and MTV 10-Spot shows?
Dutch Parrano
This cheese is the When Harry Met Sally of high-end cheese — white-bread, straight-forward, and adequately satisfying for 63% of men and women between ages 27 and 46. You can bring it to a dinner party full of strangers, and satisfy both the cheeserati and the cheese-oblivious. You can also mention its name at that same dinner party, and have an adequately interesting conversation perhaps punctuated by mild witticisms and/or mediocre analogies. Many of us may have a soft-spot for Dutch Parrano, and we may be ashamed of it. But at the same time most are quick to point out its undeniable — though not overwhelming — strengths. It's pleasantly salty. It nips at the tongue, slightly. One can place it on a fancy cracker, or a melt it inside a quesadilla, or eat it by itself. It doesn't mind. It's easy. Sometimes, we like easy things. Dutch Parrano reminds us that it's okay to like easy things, and to freely discuss them with strangers, and to save our energy for the more challenging things, like complicated, demanding French cheeses that have been aged in caves.
Humbird
I'll be visiting here in a few hours: Humbird Cheese Mart. I'll let you know. I'm not sure I did this link right.
Palo Alto / Cruiser
At around 4pm, the Stanford campus is always filled with runners, cyclists, and athletes in cardinal red. I appreciate this, and yet, at the same time, I feel like I'm running among highly-intelligent pod-people who have sinister intentions beneath benign good looks and have assumed the forms of innocuous, white-bread athletic types in order to Blend In. I imagine that they detach their lower jaws and consume god knows what when my back is turned, and perhaps someday I will stumble upon a flying saucer delivering giant eggs. As always, this run was suspiciously uneventful.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin researcher makes a better cheddar — Associated Press — Published March 12, 2003 — MADISON, Wis. — A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor says he's found a way to take the bitterness out of cheddar — a discovery that could save cheesemakers some serious bread. Food science professor Jim Steele said an enzyme reduces the bitter taste that afflicts low-grade cheddar cheese. "It has the potential to give consistency to the quality of cheese that we produce, and save us a whole lot of money,'' said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. Cheesemakers start by mixing a medley of bacteria called a starter culture with warm milk. They sometimes add a second batch of bacteria, called an adjunct culture. To make cheddar, they mix in an organism called Lactobacillus helveticus, which smooths out the cheese's taste and reduces bitterness. Steele and his team have worked to identify what in the organism produces this desirable effect. They hoped they could then find a way to produce the effect in the starter culture, which would drop the cost and improve the cheese. The researchers sequenced the 2,400 genes in Lactobacillus in 2001, and Steele's team identified the desired gene within six months. Cheesemakers can now add that gene to starter cultures. Paul McShane, sales manager for the small Brookfield cheese company Roth Kase, thinks Steele's enzyme would take the mystique out of cheese production. "Cheesemaking is an art, and you lose something — a quality — when you try to take shortcuts,'' he said. But Bill Schlinsog, chief judge at this week's 2003 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest in Milwaukee, hailed the discovery as a weapon against bitter cheese. "It's undesirable,'' he said. "And if it can be avoided, then that's great.''