encyclopedias

Summer is here, just in time for Vancouver's usual 4-week run of fine weather from late July to early August.

A few days ago I visited the Wikipedia website and somehow discovered that there was an entry there for The Odyssey, my TV show from the 1990s. I noticed that Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia", encourages users to edit its articles. Wow! I couldn't resist--I went in and expanded the article for The Odyssey (which I thought was already a quite good, brief summary of the show). If you click the above link it will take you to that revised version.

I found myself magnetized by the idea of participating in the project of Wikipedia. I love the idea of an altruistic, optimistic, democratic project devoted to the dissemination of knowledge. I wanted to do more! So I searched for other articles--things to which The Odyssey linked, for starters. Since my revision of the article now made mention of its genre (adventure-fantasy) near the top, I thought I'd look for material on genres. There are indeed several articles on genre. Most of them looked like they could use some help. Where to start? I decided to set to work on the article on genre fiction. Check it out! I'm responsible for most of the top half of the article, as of today, anyway (I was surprised to see that someone had already come in and added more edits overnight).

I feel like I was born to write encyclopedia articles, in some sense. I have wide-ranging, omnivorous reading tastes. I take notes. My natural writing style tends toward a dispassionate, neutral tone. As longtime readers of this blog know, I have a project folder called Encyclopedia where I keep Word "clippings" of my research books, filed by subject.

Back in 1980, when I was still on fire with enthusiasm for Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, I got a book of criticism of his work, a collection of essays called Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon, edited by George Levine and David Leverenz. One of the essays was "Gravity's Encyclopedia" by Edward Mendelson. I've read the essay several times. Mendelson's thesis was that Gravity's Rainbow is one of a select class of novels he called encyclopedic narratives. He says that

its companions in this most exclusive of literary categories are Dante's Commedia, Rabelais's five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Goethe's Faust, Melville's Moby-Dick, and Joyce's Ulysses.

Mendelson goes on to say:

Encyclopedic narratives attempt to render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture, while identifying the ideological perspectives from which that culture shapes and interprets its knowledge.

I was fascinated by this idea, and made a point of reading (or anyway attempting) each of the works in his list. When I told Warren about the essay he dubbed these authors the encyclopedists, and saw me as a would-be encyclopedist. Even I, immodest though I was in my heart of hearts, felt that might be biting off more than I could chew. But I was--and am--fascinated by the idea. And in my life I have searched for encyclopedic knowledge. (Hm. My proposed multi-volume work, The Age of Pisces, may be even bigger than a mere "national" culture--I'm even less modest than I thought!)

So: Wikipedia. Maybe I can let my "encyclopedist" tendencies out in that healthy way.

Today Kimmie and I walked through north Burnaby. At the end of our walk I made an entry in my prose sketchbook:

Stopped to do a prose sketch. Kimmie and I are on the grass of the sloping boulevard dividing the east and west lanes of Boundary Rd. Are we still on the Burnaby side? I don't know.

Touch: The pressure of breeze blowing against my skin and ears from the north, uneven little gusts. Soft firmness of my buttocks against the grass, the ground; the heel of each foot also planted downhill, the pressure holding my legs bent up at different angles. Warmth of the sun on my bare shins; leg- and arm-hairs stirring in the breeze.

Taste: Slightly salty dryness of the mouth, barely any residue of the pizza-slice of an hour ago.

Smell: A dampness of grass (dried clumps of cuttings are strewn through it). The scent of my own sunbaked shoulder.

Sound: The fading motor of a car traveling down Boundary. The pressurized rush of invisible traffic rolling onto the Second Narrows Bridge--a sandblasting sound. The low rumble of wind in my ears. The slap of Kimmie’s thongs as she walks away down the block to explore. The wheezy whine of a bench-saw reverberating from a garage in the distance. The very faint buzz and crackle of the great power-lines directly overhead, gripped by the skeletal steel towers.

Sight: Blue sky to the west, and the near-black silhouette of a fir-tree towering over a pale glossy laurel-hedge, rising at its othe end to a sunstruck splay of fruit-tree foliage. Just off he deck of the half-concealed house beyond, a little glimpse of Vancouver’s harbor in the distance: a jagged mass of blue buildings over the green water. A black 1986 subcompact sedan sits parked in the deep shade of the fir, shade that sways gently and silently on the sunlit asphalt like seaweed.

But Paul--what about your novel? Huh? My what?