an upcoming problem

 These apology posts are weird, on a blog that is read by no one. Who exactly am I sorry to? Who could I have conceivably let down? The project is a journal, a personal inventory, at the beginning; a documentation of a relationship between a subject (me) and some fairly specific aspects of culture and art. But, really, it is just the stuff I have to say, even if I’m not saying it to anyone. Right now, what I have to say is this: 

A longstanding belief of mine, to the point that it could be a theme of this blog if I had organized the blog differently, is that RGG are the significant successors to the post-modern novel and that post modern novels provide important context for understanding the background and significance of the RGG games. 

Briefly: The open world format offers a solution to the clutter and confusion of the post-modern novel, whose subject is a reality that is so complex that it can only be described with multiple narratives. RGG takes advantage of this, to my knowledge, more than anyone else and embraces the ‘open world’ as the next frontier of storytelling. 

And, I think in Kasuga’s game you saw this as distinctly as ever, and now they are releasing a game called “Infinite Wealth” which sounds a little bit like “Infinite Jest,” a major post-modern novel, so, it would seem like the coming days would be fruitful, in terms of analysis and vindication, for someone who was interested in the relationship between RGG and the post-modern novel. 

HOWEVER, in a twist that the people not reading the blog surely did not see coming: I haven’t actually read “Infinite Jest” for the completely asshole reason that I am a ‘Pynchon Man’ and that shit seems like it is for lightweights. That is, I realize, insufferable, and has now actively screwed me because I am insufficiently able to analyze a game in my favorite series, since I refuse to read a book just because I am a prick. 

It probably boils down to ‘we’re a bunch of assholes’ but being a fan of Pynchon seems to demand a degree of contempt for a large set of non-Pynchon writers; David Foster Wallace is pretty much the poster-boy for these guys. 

And I’ll just say it: not one thing anyone has ever said has made me seriously think that reading Infinite Jest would be a better use of my time than reading V, Gravity’s Rainbow, or Mason and Dixon for a sixth, fourth, or second time respectively. People who are really into Infinite Jest have, in my experience, without exception, given reasons to not take their opinions especially seriously.

And another one: you probably WOULD like Pynchon if you were good at figuring out what words meant in relationship to each other and had a better vocabulary. Anti-Pynchon sentiment is largely driven by failures of reading comprehension. It’s reductionist and shity to be like ‘if you were actually literate you would like Pynchon;’ there are, probably, anti-Pynchon arguments that have something to do with an informed response to his text. But the thing is, I have spent so much of my life debating Pynchon’s worth with people who could not understand him that if you tell me you don’t like Pynchon, I am just going to take the leap and assume it is because you don’t read very well. That’s a bad move on my part! But it is, emphatically, where life has taken me. 

I don’t really want to defend belligerent Pynchon-fandom; it’s just a thing. At some point you either are a Pynchon person and antagonistic to rest of the world that does not appreciate Pynchon, or you are not a Pynchon person, and, probably, hold the understandable view that Pynchon people are obnoxious.

Pynchon is a lot like Justice Jackson, to my mind. You have to be either and English major or a law student to have heard of them at all. Within the English major/law student populations there are small subsets that think the world revolves around their guy-- the rest of the population finds these subsets unpleasant. 

The thing is, Pynchon is so much smarter than Justice Jackson that it’s like LeBron James playing Rick Morranis in one-on-one basketball. 

A high point of Jackson’s career (hilariously in a concurring opinion, not even an official decision of the court) is figuring out that the President’s powers are 1) strongest when he does stuff Congress told him to do 2) weakest when he does stuff congress told him NOT to do and 3) kind of up in the air when Congress hasn’t weighed in one way or another. That’s, uh, fucking obvious. Writing Crying of Lot 49 (or even, presumably, Infinite Jest) is, straight-up, a SUPERIOR response to modernity than sitting on the Supreme Court and turning out that crap. 

Anyway, I will be interested to see if anyone sees a deeper connection between “Infinite Wealth” and Infinite Jest. If RGG drew heavily on Infinite Jest it would, I guess, finally point to an Infinite Jest fan whose opinions I would be interested in, and I’ll probably take a look at the thing.

We could also, I suppose, have the conversation about Japanese-English title translation and the fact that it is generally a crime against god. The issue is acute when there is a question of a title implying a connection to another work. A film that I hugely liked (and which is just a lovely encapsulation of how RGG has influenced film) is Hell Dogs—In the House of Bamboo and both certain plot elements and the use of the word “Dogs” in the title suggest a connection to the Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs. But it is really hard to know what to make of that, if that synchronicity works in the original; if whatever “Reservoir Dogs” was released as in Japanese would suggest a connection to the Japanese title of Hell Dogs-- in the House of Bamboo. Similarly, the “wealth”/”jest” connection might exist entirely in English.