Customer Reviews

Lineland: Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's Pynchon-L@Waste.Org

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Novelist Thomas Pynchon is a phantom. He never meets the press. His relatives and friends won't talk. We don't know what he looks like. Mystery surrounding Pynchon improves his marketability, but it also makes his novels difficult to decipher and criticism of his work more contentious than perhaps need be.

Now Pynchon fans have something else to argue over. It is an unusual book by Jules Siegel and Christine Wexler, two of Thomas Pynchon's old and unusual friends. Their book's unusual title is Lineland: Mortality and Mercy on the Internet's Pynchon-L@Waste.Org Discussion List (Philadelphia: Intangible Assets Manufacturing, 1997).

So what else is unusual? For one, there are more hard facts about Pynchon in this one little book than in all others written about him combined. For another, we'll probably never hear from two people with a more unusual perspective on the author.

Christine Wexler and Jules Siegel were Mrs. and Mr. Jules Siegel when, in 1969, Mrs. Siegel started a love affair with Pynchon. Mr. Siegel, the cuckold, was one of Pynchon's oldest friends. Before being interrupted by the Korean War, Siegel and Pynchon were roommates at Cornell. During the '50s they occasionally drank beer, raised hell, chased girls around the country together. By the '60s, each was a rising star in his chosen profession.

Siegel was a journalist, among the hippest of those hip young writers who pioneered what we now call The New Journalism. His street-smart articles sold big at prestigious slicks such as "Playboy" and "Esquire." He lived in a commune. He used to rap and smoke reefer with counterculture legends, Pynchon among them, until (as Siegel tells it) the novelist estranged himself after embarking on his fling with Mrs. Siegel.

Unusual enough? More unusual still is the way Lineland was constructed. The book was not written, as we ordinarily employ that term. Instead, chunks of it were downloaded piecemeal and pasted together as follows:

Pynchon-L@Waste.Org is an Internet discussion list devoted to things Pynchonese. Siegel joined the list in 1996. When members realized he was THE Jules Siegel, the one whose article about Pynchon appeared in "Playboy" (March '77), they rounded on him with a barrage of questions. Some of the Pynchonistas were rude even before Siegel introduced Wexler to the group, an act that ignited a 4-alarm flame war. Siegel saved the messages -- the hate mail and the acclaim -- and they appear as chapters in Lineland.

Stylistically the construct apes a Pynchon novel, as allusions in the title hint. Characters, personalities actually, speak from the Internet. They appear, develop, vanish and reappear like people in the bizarre vignettes of which Pynchon's books are built. The style of Lineland might thus be called "cut and pastiche" if, in so calling it, we understand that Siegel wrote most of the book himself and that the work is neither a tawdry ripoff nor some long-delayed revenge.

Indeed the most unusual thing about Lineland (given the story behind the book) is that it doesn't abuse Thomas Pynchon. Readers learn to see the author not as some omniscient literary warlock but as an ordinary, intelligent, hard-working guy who spends a lot of time in libraries. He likes beer, pizza and rock music. So far from trashing Pynchon, Lineland teases members of "Pynchon-L" in order to make the rest of us laugh at how we react when somebody hoses the glitter off one of our pop idols.

Though that's the gist of it, there is more. Lineland features some nifty cartoon illustrations by underground greats R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. Mrs. Wexler contributes a well-crafted sketch of Pynchon as she remembers him from 30 years ago. Divorced survivors of those drug-sodden days may also meet a kind of bluesy catharsis that lurks, in bell-bottoms and a Panama hat, amid the deep emotional shadows that flicker between and around the ex-Siegels.

The downside? Well, the book gets off to a slow start, tries to be an E-mail primer before settling down to business, and Siegel's ego frolics in Lineland more than some may find to their liking. For my money, however, Siegel's sophistication, his playful, earthy wit and supple prose amply compensate for any defect.

Maybe Lineland is a new kind of book. Maybe, one hopes, it is a step down the comeback trail for a major talent too long absent from journalism. Pynchonistas simply must read Lineland. Anyone else will enjoy it because it is fun.

Lineland is a wonderfully entertaining read, and a great cohesive ragbag, with a fine collection of insights and ad hominems from cast and crew. We are all of us a little obsessive, cranky, humorous/less, playful, egocentric, ornery and flawed, and so for that reason it came across as a very human book. The writing was also very human: funny, limpid, insightful, vain, candid, obstreperous... I won't go on, but you get the point, I'm sure. It's also a nice introduction to IRC and the Internet, its denizens and its make-up.

And, yes, I did find it strange to see a regular human-shaped Thomas Pynchon opening up a little, but it doesn't change my image of his books. Why should it? I think the need for some of the "listers" (and some of them did seem to be on a slight mental keel) to take umbrage at Jules Siegal's accounts just highlights a need to hold onto myth, secular or otherwise. A lot of people were disappointed when Pynchon wrote an open, chatty preface to his collection of short stories, Slow Learner. Basically, they just didn't want to see a human face appear behind the parting thunderheads of his mystery--and we all need to believe in something, after all. But don't worry, this book is a great literary snack, and the Pynchon enigma remains intact at its end.

Siegal is a Forrest Gump, a human catalyst for the literary and cultural people, products, and events. His genius, revealed early in the brushstrokes of a compulsory hibiscus-flower painting, are transferred into the inspiration for Mario Puzo's Godfather, material fodder for Pynchon's novels, as well as inspiration for R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. His is the life that art imitates, his function as muse clashing with that of artist. Apparently awed by his catalytic power and unable to take the heat, he puts himself into self-storage in a tropical paradise where local language barriers provide a buffer of non-conductivity for this nugget of American cultural uranium. Along comes the internet. Here we are exposed to Jules' brief reintroduction, and see what he sees on the way back. He examines elements of our computer infrastructure and culture like an archeologist: is it a chamber pot or sacrificial vessel? But then the chain-reactions start again, as he coerces his former wife to do a chatroom interview about her fling with Pynchon. Jules neatly gets the last word on all his critics as he signs off.

Engaging - I started reading and couldn't put it down! Whether one knows of Thomas Pynchon (author of the best selling novel Mason & Dixon and Gravity's Rainbow) or not is irrelevant. I learned much about Pynchon's personality and the personalities of his admirers. Siegel teases and entices participants on the Pychon email list with his personal knowledge and humorous stories about this famous reclusive author. Most fascinating, for me, was the nature of the interaction between participants. With faceless, voicelss digital transmissions, the players appear much freer (and sometimes less humane) than those of us who still talk face-to-face or on the phone. However, it turns out to be all good fun. This book is intellectually stimulating, humorous, entertaining and fun. I really enjoyed it.