Recluse Deuces: Salinger and Pynchon, Two Modern Literary Outliers, Part II – TR Pynchon Jr

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Comparative politics, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Politics, Popular Culture

The second in our brace of reclusive authors of American fiction is Thomas Pynchon (see preceding blog on JD Salinger). Long Island-born Pynchon came to the full-time vocation of fiction-writing via short stints in the navy and for Boeing as a technical aide. By the time Pynchon writes his first novel, V. in 1963, he is domiciled in México City, and the persona of Pynchon as an “Invisible Man of Letters” has already started to take root. 

PYNCHON

If there were slim pickings for inquisitive fans of JD Salinger wanting more biographical information about their reclusive ‘fave’ writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Pynchon! Pynchon has managed to weave an airtight web of mystery around his personal life – no interviews, no attendance of literary prize awards, no memoirs, no hobnobbing with fellow celebrities at ‘A’ list gatherings, no teaching post in academia. In Pynchon’s (loosely) historically-based novel Mason & Dixon one of the characters is castigated for “the least tolerable of Offences … the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity’” – the very state of existence that Pynchon craves. The reclusive and ubër-private New Yorker differs from the equally reclusive Salinger in not having had to suffer the ignominy of family ‘betrayal’ as Salinger was subjected to. Pynchon’s family (agent/wife, son, brother and sister) and friends have all closed ranks, drawing down the cone of silence on the subject of the famous recluse＊.

Pynchon belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the label ‘postmodern’ are typically characterised by over-elaborate and often open-ended plots, dense and hard to follow, labyrinthine sentences (Mason & Dixon meanders a full 122 words before it reaches its first full stop!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical information and comic-book fantasy (with a raft of quirky and zany characters), etc. Beginning with The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the first of Pynchon’s “Californian trilogy” novels, the author turns a critical eye on the counterculture…although Pynchon evinces a consonance with its core values and communitarian ideals he voices a concern that the American counterculture may be an accessory of the dominant culture rather than a genuine reaction to it [‘American Modernity and Counterculture’, (The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon), www.litcharts .org]. In ‘Lot 49’ protagonist Oedipa Maas accidentally stumbles into Trystero, a shadowy world of convoluted conspiracies, unearthing a centuries-old conflict between rival mail distribution companies.

Political Pynchon?
A central motif that comes through in Pynchon’s novels is a distrust bordering on paranoia of government agencies and private corporations. In Gravity’s Rainbow he expresses deep suspicions about the motives of the military/industrial complex. But Pynchon seems also to distrust the established political left in its empirical authoritarian form. Instead, his natural orientation and sympathies seem to be towards the anarchists and the preterites (ie, those controlled by the elite). One scholar notes that anarchists or allusions to them are present in all of the Pynchon books … anarchism, Pynchon seems to suggest, might be the best non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical social configuration for the future [‘Riding the Interface: An Anarchist Reading of Gravity’s Rainbow’, (Graham Benton), www.pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org]. Politics also run through Pynchon’s next, Vineland (1990), a novel which some dismissively dispatched as “Pynchon-Lite”. Vineland is an absurdist fable— punctuated with numerous references to drugs, 1960s music and TV pop culture, especially Star Wars—through which Pynchon provides a commentary on several key issues of the Eighties (the culture war debates, reading, television and mass communications). Set against the backdrop of the Republican Party’s re-election in 1984, Pynchon also takes a hefty swipe at American politics in the age of Reaganomics with a warning to America about “encroaching fascism” [Meinel, Tobias. “A Deculturated Pynchon? Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” and Reading in the Age of Television.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 58, no. 3 (2013): 451-64. Accessed November 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43485900].

❝ Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—I don’t like the way it came out … someday, with the right man in the White House, there will be a Department of Jesus.❞

~ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his universe by choosing when and what of himself he gives up to the world at large. Famously Pynchon has appeared (in animated form) on two episodes of The Simpsons, having dictated the terms of his guest spot (clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※). Obviously the idea of the Simpsons gig tickled his humerus wildly, as he is shown(sic) wearing a paper bag on his head and gets to say that he loves Marge Simpson’s book “almost as much as he loves cameras”.

The “no selfies” author  
Tom Pynchon has been incredibly successful over many decades, especially living in a metropolis of over eight million people, in scrupulously avoiding the lenses of the ubiquitous paparazzi. Until very recently there was virtually no new photos of the reclusive writer floating round⍟. Media outlets when running a story on Pynchon almost invariably fall back on the one or two photos taken during his navy days (when Pynchon was aged around 19/20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as  self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that an early trip to the dentist could surely have helped with). Whether this explanation holds water or not is of course, like everything else, a topic Pynchon is deafeningly silent on. On the issue of Pynchon hermetically sealing himself off from the world, a more plausible speculation is that it may be a reflection of Pynchon’s disapproval of the modern trend of writers embracing, even rejoicing, in the role of being celebrities, eg, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote et al [‘Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He’s Always Been’, (J.K. Trotter), The Atlantic, 17-Jun-2013, www.theatlantic.com].

A method in the madness?  
The lengths Pynchon will go to avoid being photographed have a paranoia-like tinge to them, and some are legendary. Once in México during the Early Sixties V. period, when surprised by a random photographer, Pynchon apparently jumped straight out of his apartment window to escape being snapped [‘Hiding in Plain Sight: On the unobservable Thomas Pynchon’, (Alex Gilvarry), Topic, Issue No. 04, October 2027, www.topic.com]. The failure to pin down the identity of a famous but reclusive novelist contributes to the creation of myths … the enigma of an “invisible literary man” exudes more intrigue. Pynchon would understand that having a mystique about him, another layer of interest for his ‘gonzo’ fan base to engage with, would have a bonus marketable spin-off for the author’s sales [‘Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon’, (Nancy Jo Sales), New York, 27-Jun-2008, www.nymag.com].

Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names  
Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of characters. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pychon rolls out no fewer than 400 named characters in 760 pages (most with fleeting walk-on, walk-off parts). Pynchon also revels in preposterous nomenclature, inventing lots of outrageous puns like Joaquin Stick, Benny Profane and the Marquis de Sod (a Californian lawn-care specialist!), and an inexhaustible supply of downright silly names – including McClintic Sphere, Tyrone Slothrop, Rachel Owlglass, Weed Atman, Yashmeen Halfcourt, Mike Fallopian, Scarsdale Vipe, Doc Sportello, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke and Pig Bodine. Needless to say from the jokey nature of this Pynchon nomen-sampler that fleshing out a character’s depths is not really the New Yorker’s bag [‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

An orgy of exegesis: Conspiracy la-la land
As someone with a lofty literary profile in the US and beyond (regularly mentioned in the mix of annual Nobel Prize contenders), the utter paucity of biographical information on Pynchon has given rise to some pretty wild speculation about who he really is? Outré theories abound on the internet about the novelist’s identity, one of the most persistent is that Thomas Pynchon is really JD Salinger! Presumably the germ of this notion was the commonalities between the two, both perceived as hermits with a pathological allergy to attention, and each shared a fierce insistence on their personal privacy. But what gave added weight to the imaginative coupling in people’s minds was Salinger’s early removal from the public gaze and the supposed drying up of his literary output as evidenced by the complete cessation of his published work post-1965. This baseless ‘theory’ holds that Salinger invented “Thomas Pynchon” as an “elaborate authorial personality” to hide behind (Trotter). Even more ludicrous was the allegation that Pynchon was in fact the Unabomber! Another speculation has him as an airline pilot in real life (motivated by Howard Hughes adulation perhaps?). Other theories, rather predictably, conclude that Pynchon has to be a drug smuggler or a CIA agent (“its all there in the stories!”) [‘Authors reveal their Thomas Pynchon conspiracy theories’, Bookish, 03-Oct-2013, www.usatoday.com]. And so it goes, with more and even crazier notions. There’s something very apt that so many loopy conspiracy theories circulate about the identity of an author whose fiction is littered with accounts of loopy conspiracy theories✫.

Footnote: Lost in Pynchon  
Given my own often bewildered reaction to much of the fiction of Pynchon, and the palpable frustration that I see exhibited by others seeking despairingly to decode Tom Pynchon’s idiosyncratically personal brand of hieroglyphics◪, I often wonder why so many of us punters keep making the self-flagellating effort…I’m reminded of the cynic’s definition of a classic book, “something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read” (Mark Twain, who else?). Echoing this is one critic’s pithy summation of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s most praised book, as the “least-read-must-read” book in American history (Sales). For the marginalised multitude denied enlightenment there is some comfort in mockery. The title of Pychon’s 2009 “Po-Mo” take on the ‘gumshoe’ novel, Inherent Vice⍉, offers a pyrrhic get-square (Incoherent Vice) [‘Incoherent Vice’, (Sam Anderson), New York, 31-Jul-2009, www.nymag.com]. 

PostScript: Absurdist and a Fabulist?
Pynchon is a black belt when it comes to telling the “shaggy-dog” story. Early critics described his novels V. and Gravity’s Rainbow as “high-caliber shaggy dog stories, full of digressions and possibly pointless details converging to a climax that revolves little” [‘Thomas Pynchon: A Primer’, (Jack Joslin), 25-Apr-2012, www.litreactor.com]. This description also applies to the later Mason & Dixon, a long rambling tale full of rollicking in taverns and absurdly inconsequential humour. Pynchon concocts a mixture of fact and fiction, the actual historical personages of Mason and Dixon blended into the “obvious lies, rumours and outright fantasies of their travels” while surveying the boundaries of colonial North America [Thomas Pynchon: Novels & Concept.” Study.com, 25 June 2013, study.com/academy/lesson/thomas-pynchon-novels-lesson-quiz.html]. This shaggy dog, picturesque style of Pynchon brings to mind Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy but also reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth who write in a Fabulist/Magic Realism vein.

————————————————-—————–

＊ the scarcity of biographical material on Pynchon doesn’t stop the “Pynchon-curious” from trawling through the texts to turn up whatever “auto-fiction” they can find…the protagonist of V., Benny Profane, “a schlemihi and human yo-yo” is ex-navy, just like his creator.

※ Pynchon, and for that matter, JD Salinger in his time, would undoubtedly have no trouble writing a treatise on daytime television had either wished to do so

 ⍟ even the photos supposed taken of the septuagenarian/octogenarian Pynchon out shopping can’t be confirmed as being genuinely of him

✫ Pynchon once famously said “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength” 

◪ one reviewer likened Pynchon’s cryptic first novel V. to a Hieronymus Bosch triptych  

⍉  thus far the only Thomas Pynchon novel to make it to the silver screen

Callan Park: The Kirkbride Experiment, a Microcosm of “Good Intentions”

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Medical history, Public health,, Social History

Up from the water’s edge, the staggered hills, fields, woods, bush and scrubby vegetation, form the grounds that used to be known as Callan Park. On the pathway below, cyclists speed and joggers and walkers scurry along the popular Bay Run which skirts Sydney’s Iron Cove. Further up the undulating slopes of the park’s environs, the primary daytime activity seems to be the exercising of all manner of dog breeds by the local denizens.

Gardener's cottage The Gardener’s cottage

Callan Park is six kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, a broad area of some 61 hectares of largely park and woodland with scattered pockets of bush. If you stroll round its numerous, roughly concentric and hilly streets and walkways, you will find a very pleasant, tranquil parkland with an undulating landscape, gently sloping down till it reaches the foreshore of Iron Cove on the Parramatta River. The only residual sign of the presence of the area’s indigenous custodians, the Wangal clan (of the Eora tribe) who for thousands of years moved up and down its ridges and through its dense forests of Blackbutts and Ironbarks, are some traditional rock carvings out on the point of the Cove.

imageThe sense of tranquility that the visitor gets is joined by a second sense, that of a pervading air of abandonment. When I first explored the area with only a vague grasp of these old cottages and workshacks being somehow part of Callan Park, the disused, dilapidated buildings left me with the initial impression that I had stumbled onto some sort of industrial wasteland, much like you might encounter in Peter Carey’s early short stories, but with decrepit, crumbling, asbestos-ridden buildings replacing the decrepit, rusty dismantled cars of The Fat Man in History. So many of the old brick-and-stone buildings jotted across the land are in varying degrees of decay, some boarded up to prevent assault from vandals, for others it is too late – they are already showing the pockmarks of wilful destruction … countless broken windows and doors and graffiti everywhere. Almost all of the structures bear the familiar yellow-and-black warning sign “DANGER ASBESTOS” or more ambiguously, “MAY CONTAIN ASBESTOS”.

At least since the beginning of the 20th century it’s been an urban cliché in Sydney to hear the name “Callan Park” casually thrown around … people suspected of aberrant thoughts or exhibiting the slightest deviance from the norm would regularly be on the receiving end of a comment like “You should be in Callan Park!”. This often would be in a flippant tone but sometimes the intent was more threatening, or at least, definitely condemnatory. Such is the stigma of Callan Park’s long-held reputation as a place to dump the mentally ill.

The first significant European use of the land at Callan Park flowed from local land grants made by Governor Macquarie in 1819-20. Land speculators moved to try to acquire the smaller plots and consolidate them into larger estates. In the 1830s two men in the colony with influence and means led the way in this. At the southern end of the park Deputy Surveyor-General Samuel Perry acquired an estate known as Spring Cove (now in Leichhardt North) where he built an impressive mansion home he called Kalouan, around 1840-41.

Garryowen Garryowen

At more or less the same time, John Ryan Brenan, the colony’s Crown Solicitor and Police Magistrate, consolidated his holdings at the northern part of the land where he constructed an elegant Georgian stone home which he named Garryowen (the closest pub to Kirkbride, just over from the park in Darling Street, is named after this pioneer home). Brenan also acquired land near Perry’s estate and built a second, more palatial home called Broughton House. By the mid-1860s Brenan, facing bankruptcy, was forced to sell his properties and holdings. At this point any idea that the land might be used as an asylum hadn’t been contemplated. The new owner of the Garryowen Estate, businessman John Gordon, renamed the estate “Callan Park” with the idea of subdividing it to create a bayside suburb. Gordon’s plans were trumped by the NSW Colonial Government after colonial architect James Barnet persuaded Premier Henry Parkes to purchase the whole site for £12,500 in 1873.

The government was coming under community pressure to address the increasingly critical overcrowding in public asylums, especially in the main Sydney asylum at Tarban Creek (Gladesville). By 1876 Callan Park’s first in-patients were transferred into Brenan’s former homestead, Garryowen House from Darlinghurst. This was only a stopgap measure and Barnet together with the Medical Superintendent of Tarban Creek, Dr Frederick Manning, eventually convinced the government to seek a more permanent solution for the burgeoning numbers of the mentally ill. Barnet and Manning persuaded the Parkes Government as to the wisdom of building a brand new hospital. Both men wanted to create a more humane environment than that prevailing in the appalling, gloomy, prison-like conditions of Tarban Creek (which frankly wouldn’t have been hard, so parlous was the state of the Gladesville asylum!) A site was chosen, directly across from Garryowen, to construct a very large complex intended as a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital providing a curative and therapeutic environment.

Kirkbride & Italianate Tower Kirkbride & it’s Italianate Tower

Between 1880 and early 1885 some 33 graceful sandstone buildings in the Victorian classical style were erected on a raised rock and earth platform and then enclosed within four sandstone perimeter walls. The complex was eventually named ‘Kirkbride‘ (often referred to as the Kirkbride Block) was named in honour of an influential American psychiatrist who advocated that pleasant surroundings for patients were conducive to “moral therapy”. The hospital’s first director of mental health, Dr F Norton Manning (also the NSW Inspector-General for the Insane), shared the prevailing moral therapy view of insanity as sinful, a character flaw that could be cured (or at least ameliorated) by preoccupation with work (outdoor gardening and trades for men and domestic service for women). If you coupled that with an attractive physical environment and religious instruction, this was the pathway to recovery, according to its advocates [S Garton, Medicine and Madness. A Social History of Insanity in NSW 1880-1940]

The Kirkbride complex, with its Free Classical style sandstone design, was the work of colonial architect James Barnet. It was the largest building project completed to that time in the colony (in fact the largest undertaken until the 20th century) at a then enormous cost of £250,000. Barnet collaborated with the hospital’s), whose designs for Kirkbride were based on the Chartham Downs institution in Kent. Kirkbride was designed with spacious, pavilion wards and sun-lit verandahs and connecting courtyards. To compliment the aesthetic virtues of Kirkbride, an attractive lawn setting and a tree-lined picturesque (sunken) garden was constructed below the block. The appealing garden and the spaciousness of the Hospital was meant to break down the effects of the patients’ natural feelings of confinement by affording them more scope for movement.

These grand, pleasure gardens were designed by Charles Moore, the Director of the National Botanic Gardens, with which they share some stylistic similarities. The gardens also contain something of a cross-cultural curio, a war memorial in the Spanish mission style [Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney, (1991)]. The eastern part of the park, near to Balmain Road, is lined with Port Jackson fig trees. At the northern end of Kirkbride, near where North Crescent circles round to become Central Avenue, are a couple of massive ancient Moreton Bay figs with the most amazing, gigantic root system.

image

Before taking up his post as Superintendent of Kirkbride Manning travelled overseas, researching the most modern methods of treating the insane. As well as creating the right aesthetic environment, his philosophy focused on the need to engage patients in meaningful work and recreational activities, such as growing their own produce and other farming pursuits (in this sense Manning was something of a harbinger in advocating the use of “occupational therapy”, a term and concept not in vogue until the 20th century) [Callan Park Conservation Management Plan, www. Leichhardt.nsw.gov.au.

Dr Manning also placed an emphasis on the quality of staffing, and played a key role in advancing the professional status of psychiatric nurses in Australian institutions. He insisted that nurses and attendants at Callan Park have proper training to be competent in working effectively in an asylum, and advocated that they be appropriately remunerated for their work.

'Clockless' Clock Tower & rear wall ‘Clockless’ Clock Tower & rear wall

A highlight of the architecture of the Kirkbride Block is the decorative Venetian “clock tower”(sans clock – it was never installed for some reason!). The tower is part of Kirkbride’s built-in reticulation system, on top of the tower is a tidal ball copper spire which indicates the water level of the underground reservoir below. Rainwater from the run-offs is collected in two underground tanks and pumped to the wards (one tank is reserved for any fire emergency). The surrounding walls of the complex employed a device called a “Ha-Ha” Wall. Barnet would have learned this from the work of 18th century English landscape architect ‘Capability’ Brown. A Ha-Ha Wall is where a steep ditch is dug along the inside of the wall to prevent patients scaling it, whilst at the same time retaining the exterior view (allowing patients views from their verandahs extending to the Blue Mountains)[“Rozelle Hospital Heritage Study” 1991 report (PDF), www.callanparkyourplan.com.au ; “Kirkbride Past & Present”, SCA, www.sydney.edu.au].

The 5.1HA block was designed to be entirely self-contained, with its own kitchens, separate dining halls, capacity for 666 patients (with an even 333 split for each gender) in the rooms and dormitories (male and female were segregated at opposite ends of the block with other sections in the middle). The complex also contained staff residences, bathhouses, laundries, bakery, workshop, lecture halls, library, chapel, morgue and administration block. To the south of the tower is a furnace stack which was used to generate steam required for the laundries.

imageManning’s successor as Inspector-General Eric Sinclair was also ahead of the game! He introduced more specialised (special admissions) wards, such as the Female Cottage Hospital, to treat curable cases through early intervention, and advocated to have treatment of mental disease put on a more scientific basis [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 05 December 2015].

Sadly, over the course of the next century, Manning’s vision of an enlightened psychiatric hospital using modern scientific methods to care for those unfortunate enough to suffer from mental illness, floundered on a sea of inadequate government funding, staffing problems and chronic overcrowding, and until more recent times, met largely with public indifference. The overcrowding was a contributing factor in Kirkbride patient treatment becoming less rehabilitative in emphasis and more custodial as time went on.