1.
When I was a kid, Pizza Hut handed out pizzas for reading books.
Now that I'm an adult, I’m asking for a raise.
I read one of the hardest books in the English language and I will settle for nothing less than a Carvel ice cream cake.
2.
In 1984, Thomas Pynchon wrote an essay called “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” 25 years later, I read it, and it blew my mind.1 Then, four years later, I read his most celebrated work, the 880-page book Gravity’s Rainbow, and it blew.
Not my mind. It just blew.
This year is the 12th anniversary of me completing “the most important work of fiction yet produced by any living writer” and I’m still waiting for my ice cream cake.
3.
Not just any ice cream cake. Six months of emotional labor deserves a full Carvel Cookie Puss.2
4.
When I read “Luddite?”, I was in college using StumbleUpon every day to kill time -- this was before algorithms, and I was a cool kid with a lot of friends — and here was this essay for free on the New York Times website — this was before paywalls, and I was like the coolest kid on my college campus, seriously you should have seen how cool I was — on a topic that genuinely interested me: the origins of the luddite cult that led to the destruction of several knitting machines in industrial England, and the subsequent hangings of up to 40 such luddites whose only crime was the destruction of private property.
Imagine Joe Biden hanging 40 people for burning down a MicroCenter. That’s how much the English government hated the luddites.
Pynchon used his essay to bring historical context into a contemporary focus. Even the title stings. He asks us the question, “Is It O.K. To Be a Luddite?” As an English student, I read a lot of junk I didn’t care about and wrote a lot of papers with no real point of view. But here was “Luddite?”, a piece of unrequired reading causing me to seriously question who I was and how I felt.
That’s something that essays are great at doing. The good ones, anyway, will cause you to question your personhood.
So when I graduated and finally found the time to read Gravity’s Rainbow, I was sad to discover how lonely it made me feel.
5.
“Since 1959, we have come to live among flows of data more vast than anything the world has seen. Demystification is the order of our day, all the cats are jumping out of all the bags and even beginning to mingle.” — Thomas Pynchon, “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?”
Let me pause here to say, isn’t it striking how the minute after the earthquake struck New York, you could go online and find out all kinds of information about it? Mere minutes later, you started seeing the memes. Isn’t it perplexing that it takes all of 28 seconds to book an Airbnb in Cleveland or Buffalo, or wherever you went to see the eclipse?
I wonder where Cookie Puss watched the eclipse.
6.
“Is It O.K. To Be a Luddite?” is like hanging out with an intellectual fun dude who likes to listen to rock music and watch kung fu movies. It is as rich and rewarding as any of Pynchon’s novels but delivered in a svelte 3,774 words. It takes about a half hour to read.
Reading Gravity’s Rainbow is like lending your couch to the physical manifestation of Carvel’s Cookie Puss.
Look at this guy. This is the kind of guy who shows up and says he only needs to stay for a few days until he and his girlfriend make up, but then he ends up staying for six months. In that time, he uses up your favorite shampoo and somehow breaks your refrigerator.
If I may, Cookie Puss looks like the kind of guy who thinks he’s funny, which, in my opinion, is the worst kind of guy.
7.
Revisiting Pynchon’s masterpiece, which turned 50 last year, I’m sure you could accuse him of any number of crimes -- misogyny, homophobia, dormant racism -- but the worst thing I can say about Gravity’s Rainbow is that it totally bombs for 880 pages. It may be great literature, but if anyone tells you Gravity’s Rainbow is funny, I recommend you to leave the group chat immediately.
Laughing at Gravity’s Rainbow is like dancing to Gilbert and Sullivan.3
8.
“Since Hiroshima, we have watched nuclear weapons multiply out of control, and delivery systems acquire, for global purposes, unlimited range and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance of a holocaust running to seven- and eight- figure body counts has become — among those who, particularly since 1980, have been guiding our military policies — conventional wisdom.” -- Thomas Pynchon, “Is It O.K. To Be a Luddite?”
That’s not funny. What it is is really good.
9.
I don’t care that it won the National Book Award.
I don’t care that Ryan what’s-his-name who-started-LCD-Soundsystem likes it, and some guy on Reddit hunts people down trying to convince them to make their girlfriends read it. I doubt the premise that Gravity’s Rainbow has anything to add to the current moment and whatever wisdom it has gets buried beneath a mountain of nonsense.
But maybe I’m just sore because I still haven’t gotten my Cookie Puss. I hope whoever they mistakenly shipped it to got to enjoy it before it melted.
10.
THIS IS THE END OF THE ESSAY.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to
for posting in Substack Writers at Work with the challenge to write an essay about “LITERARY FICTION WHERE IF YOU LOVE ONE CERTAIN BOOK FROM AN AUTHOR, YOU'RE UNLIKELY TO LIKE THE REST OF THEIR WORK.” I didn’t follow the prompt exactly. Please give me my “Incomplete” and I will try to make it up in night classes.Thank you to
for being brave enough to come out as a Gravity’s Rainbow hater before me. You passionate disdain for a heralded work of art feeds my soul.Thanks to
for also being real about this, and reminding me of Gravity’s Rainbows merits so I didn’t go overboard with vitriol.And thanks to
for giving several different perspectives on GR that, while it does not make me ever want to read it again, allowed me to put my feelings into words.And thanks as always to Scarlet, my trusty assistant. Thank you for being such a trooper and writing this entire thing while I took ax throwing lessons. I love you so much, Scarlet. I promise to pay you back that four thousand dollars as soon as I get a few more paid subs.
Footnote: Miraculously, it’s still unpaywalled. Save a PDF before they take it away!
Not to distract too much from the main story here, but if you didn’t want to read about great works of literature, I thought I’d give you a way out. Hey, did you know that Carvel cakes have canonical backstories? According to the frozen cake people themselves, Cookie Puss was formerly named “Celestial Person” before rebranding himself as Cookie Puss. I can see why! He is an alien who “enjoys visiting his buddies the Jetsons, watching his favorite movie Star Wars, and singing along to Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man.’"
Footnote: Are you trying to get people to leave your house after a party? Pop on some HMS Pinafore and I guarantee you they’ll be long gone before “Little Buttercup.”
Culture boy, you have now made me want to read Is it ok to be a luddite🙉 Also, that cake is a little scary...
Maybe I should not recommend Gravity’s Rainbow for my Bodega Book Club…..