THE BUZZING
By Jim Knipfel
"In using the myth, in manipulating a continuous parallel between
contemporaneity and antiquity, Mr. Joyce is pursuing a method which others must
pursue after him. . . . It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of
giving a shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy
which is contemporary history. . . . Instead of narrative method we may now use
the mythical method. It is, I seriously believe, a step toward making the modern
world possible for art . . . " - T. S. Eliot
And so it was, in 1923. But if the futility and anarchy has only increased in
the last 80 years, what new methods (or should that be defence mechanisms?) have
we developed to make our world "possible for art"? Where will a
contemporary author find a way of "ordering, of giving a shape and
significance" to our confused and chaotic reality? Not from reading The
Golden Bough, surely.
Believing in such an order and shape is still a prerequisite for art, not to
mention a basic psychological need for most people. Experience is nothing
without understanding. Here, for example, is one modern Seeker’s attempt at an
epiphany (for this is a religious impulse):
For it was now like walking among matrices of a great digital computer, the
zeroes and ones twinned above, hanging like balanced mobiles right and left,
ahead, thick, maybe endless. Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either
be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth. . . . Another mode of meaning
behind the obvious, or none. Either Oedipa in the orbiting ecstasy of a true
paranoia, or a real Tristero. For there either was some Tristero beyond the
appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America and if there was
just America then it seemed the only way she could continue, and manage to be at
all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some
paranoia.
Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (which is where this passage
comes from) has some claim to be the current generation’s Ulysses.
Instead of the mythical method we may now use the paranoid method. It is the
conspiracy that gives life purpose. Without the Tristero there is only the
earth, "only death and the daily, tedious preparations for it." Yes,
there is a pattern, an order, a "true paranoia," a meaning to
all of those seemingly unrelated messages and trivial occurrences that make up
our everyday lives. But it is hidden. That’s the way they like it. God
works in strange and suspicious ways.
The hero of Jim Knipfel’s The Buzzing is Roscoe Baragon, an
investigative reporter now relegated to covering the "kook beat" for a
New York City daily. These kooks are all paranoids: convinced that various
agencies both natural and supernatural are plotting against them. And before you
can say "Miss Lonelyhearts" Roscoe has been sucked in - seeing the
outline of a Grand Unified Conspiracy behind a falling spacelab, a chain of
earthquakes, strange whale behaviour, radioactive corpses, and a mysterious real
estate company staffed by white-robed "Seatopians."
As a conspiracy thriller, The Buzzing is clever and twisted enough,
though sometimes a little too confusing for its own good. Part of that confusion
is meant to mimic Baragon’s own descent into paranoia, where even the innocent
and innocuous become twisted. Seeing connections everywhere is a fertile
madness. Knipfel also has a tendency to fall into cliché, especially with his
characters: the jaded reporter, the fresh new kid with a journalism degree from
Columbia, the irascible editor. One has the sense that even their creator isn’t
very interested in these people.
The turn of the screw in this conspiracy story is that it comes via Japan’s
Toho Studios, famous for their Godzilla movies and related creature features.
The Seatopians - if that is what they really are - made their first appearance
in Godzilla vs. Megalon. Whatever the reality, Baragon imagines the
Seatopian conspiracy in movie terms (luckily he is a fan of Japanese monster
trash and is able to figure out all of the connections). It is the paranoid
order - the plot! - of the movies that Baragon is seeking. His Golden
Bough is a library of Grade Z horror flicks. His girlfriend tries to
explain:
"Real life isn’t a movie, Roscoe. I’m sorry. No matter how
much you want it to be sometimes. There aren’t big plots with clean
resolutions. Things are sloppy. Things just happen."
Things just happen? Life not like the movies? That’s just giving into the
immense panorama of futility and anarchy. That’s just making life a
preparation for death. We need our plots. We need supreme fictions, significant
forms that matter, to bring meaning to life. And where else will we find it
expressed but in our most dominant form of art:
That’s the one thing none of the paranoids he’d interviewed had ever
admitted. Oh, all the conspiracies were evil and horrible and terrifying, yes
– but where would they be without them? There had to be a certain tingle of
superiority in knowing you were the only person in the world who really knew
what the score was. Conspiracies, moreover, also help make the normal
redundancies of life a little more bearable. More than bearable even – they
made things exciting. It was pretty seductive, leaving the world of stubbed toes
and clipped coupons and phone bills in order to enter the world of spies and
evil scientists and monsters. In short, stepping into the movies. Without their
fears, what would these people do all day?
What indeed?
Notes:
Review first published online September 29, 2003. I had an interesting time
writing this review. I knew I wanted to say something about Pynchon’s The
Crying of Lot 49, but my copy was lost in storage somewhere (I’m always in the
process of moving). So I went to the public library to find the passage I wanted
(quoted above). I was surprised to learn that the library didn’t have it in
any branch! Somewhat miffed, I dropped by the local Chapters
"superstore" (on a par with the American Borders and Barnes &
Noble chains) to get what I needed. But the Chapters I went to didn’t carry
any Pynchon titles! Not one! I checked their computer. I even went to another
Chapters store in another city close by with the same result. It makes you
wonder. I always thought Pynchon had quite a following, and The Crying of Lot 49
is easily his most accessible work. So why is it so hard to find a copy?
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