A Combination of Things

Atmospheric Disturbances - Rivka Galchen

There is a not so new, but i suppose new in the scheme of literature new, genre of fiction based around authors who are incredibly smart but not as clever as they think they are. Its hard to say who started this genre and I am sure people will have different opinions than i do but I am going to say it started with my good buddy Thomas Pynchon although he is different from all the writers that came after him in that he actually is as clever as he thinks he is, more so in fact. He is the father. Kurt Vonnegut who I am not a huge fan of is the son and everyone else is just a child picking up the scraps that missed Pynchons mouth while he was busy devouring society. Who are these little children? These are the ones I am personally aware of, there could always be more: William T Vollman, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, TC Boyle, Chuck Palahniuk and we can now add Rivka Galchen to this list as its seconds grossest offender next to Jonathan Safran Foer who is the worst. A few of these people, Michael Chabon, TC Boyle, Jonathen Lethem, can almost stand toe to toe with Pynchon because they are technical craftsmen. They know how to construct sentences and phrases, they are technical wizards so when they dabble in the absurd, which is one of the keys to this whole genre, it doesnt come off as simply an interesting premise surrounded by a lot of fluff. They know how fiction works like Pynchon and Vonnegut did. The rest of them have their moments. They are all smart, most of them have Masters degrees from Ivy League schools, they can all be funny at times, although that doesnt apply to Jonathan Safran Foer, but their books are basically just premise festivals or showcases for how much smarter they are than you. Are a lot of William T Vollmans books unreadable? yes and he probably did that on purpose to show you how much smarter he is than you. This is very important to these authors, putting the reader in their place and that place is usually in the slums of the mass media trying to claw their way into the upper crust of literature and high culture which is where people like David Foster Wallace, William T Vollman and Jonathan Safran Foer think they reside. Rivka Galchen fits in well with this latter group. She has a degree from Columbia, she writes intelligently about meteorology, and she sometimes does nice pacing and atmosphere things with long passages of mostly dialogue. But Atmospheric Disturbances is all premise, the premise being a man for no reason thinks that his wife is not really his wife but a simulacrum. The book details his search for his real wife. it is about 200 pages too long and its only 240 pages. The majority of this book’s time is wasted exploring and detailing things that are not important to you or the story. It is 240 pages of nonsense with plot points thrown in at random intervals to move along the story. This is how all of these other authors are related to Pynchon. he was a master of disguising the useless as useful. Gravitys Rainbow could have been 100 pages long but it could also have been 10,000. You dont know, you dont know what hes getting at, you dont know if all the information in that book is trying to make 1 point or dozens of points or if he is really just messing with you and all he is really trying to say is that Slothrop had a lot of sex during World War II. Its impossible to know what belongs and what doesnt. Which is what all of the modern practitioners of this genre have failed to master. I didnt hate Atmospheric Disturbances but it was pointlessly difficult and during the two weeks it took me to read i constantly felt like i was wasting my time. I will call them the New Absurdists. Keep on Chooglin’

Tags: Rivka Galchen, Thomas Pynchon