If you’ve read enough of my blog posts, you’ll likely realize that I have an abiding interest in the rhythm of sentences. In a blog post on first lines, I concluded with the argument that all that really matters in a novel’s first line is rhythm, which can carry the reader through the rest of the book. I’ve also written about the beauty of long sentences, “in which a long, beautiful series of clauses and modifiers unfurls across the page like a banner in the wind.” But so far I’ve avoided writing about rhythm directly, largely because I’ve found it difficult to distill the idea of good rhythm down to a simple craft lesson. I do believe all elements of writing, even rhythm, can be taught—I just think rhythm might the hardest thing of all to teach.
For me, no one exemplifies the power of rhythm better than—yes, you guessed it—Thomas Pynchon (in a previous blog post, I describe him as having “a unique, swaggering, vaguely off-kilter prose, like someone balancing objects of varying sizes in a great tower and then gleefully watching as it crashes to the floor, in the process somehow managing to be simultaneously manic and lyrical.”). Reading his sentences can be difficult, because his rhythms don’t always follow the most “natural” patterns of human speech—no simple iambic pentameter for him. Yet there is an undeniable grace to his sentences. And so, in this blog post, I want to break down the rhythm of just one of his sentences, one that struck me as soon as I first read it sometime last year.
The sentence appears towards the beginning of Vineland, Pynchon’s 1990 novel about the end of the counterculture in the Ronald Reagan 1980s. The novel follows Prairie, daughter of ex-hippie Zoyd Wheeler and ex-activist Frenesi Gates, as she flees from vengeful federal agent Brock Vond and tries to understand the vanished world of her parent’s youth. At this point in the novel, the end of the fourth chapter, Prairie is about to leave her father’s Vineland County home in Northern California with her boyfriend Isaiah Two Four and his punk band Billy Barf and the Vomitones, in order to hide from Brock, who’s just arrived in town with an army of federal agents:
Somebody put a Fascist Toejam cassette, 300 watts of sonic apocalypse, on to the van stereo, Isaiah gallantly handed Prairie up into the lurid fuchsia padding of this rolling orgy room, where she became indistinct among an unreadable pattern of Vomitones and their girlfriends, and quickly, in an arc unexpectedly graceful, they had all turned outward, tached up, engaged, and like a time machine departing for the future, forever too soon for Zoyd, boomed away up the thin, cloudpressed lane.
Plot-wise, the sentence is pretty simply and direct, three actions written as independent clauses and linked in a simple list, first somebody putting on some music, then Isaiah leading Prairie into the van, and then finally the van driving off. But the way Pynchon writes the sentence, the somewhat odd words he chooses and the way various modifiers and subordinate clauses interrupt the list of actions, gives the sentence a tension that pulls it back like a rubber band before propelling it to its nostalgic and melancholy conclusion.
First, for example, we get the independent clause “somebody put a Fascist Toejam cassette, 300 watts of sonic apocalypse, on to the van stereo.” “Fascist Toejam” is one of Pynchon’s classic gag names, a fake 1980s punk band that exemplifies the differences in musical taste between Zoyd’s 1960s generation and Isaiah’s 1980s one (something the two argue about earlier in the book, when “Fascist Toejam” is first mentioned). Beginning the sentence with this band’s music playing gives what follows a background soundtrack, a punk rhythm that the reader can imagine, especially after the phrase “300 watts of sonic apocalypse,” which not only encapsulates what a punk band like “Fascist Toejam” might sound like, but also has a sinister rhythm of its own, especially that multisyllabic word “apocalypse.” But more significant is Pynchon’s decision to interrupt this first clause, to insert the modifier “300 watts of sonic apocalypse” in the middle of the clause, before the prepositional phrase “on to the van stereo.” What this does is hold back the progress of the sentence, giving it a tension and a halting rhythm—tension that, by the end of the sentence, will release in a “boom” as the van zooms away.
Moving into the second independent clause, we experience a similar held back sensation, especially because the phrase “Isaiah gallantly handed Prairie up” is written as an independent clause but follows a simple comma and not a coordinator such as the word “and” (it’s important to note here that while Pynchon’s postmodern prose can be off-kilter and odd, it tends mostly to follow the conventions of grammar and doesn’t too often indulge in the non-grammatical stream-of-consciousness writing of earlier modernist writers). Thus, when we see a second subordinate clause connected with only a comma, we know there will be a third later on to complete the list that this sentence is clearly setting up—thus, as Isaiah is “gallantly” handing Prairie to his bandmates in the van, we get the same tension, the desire to want this sentence to conclude that will help propel us to the end in the final independent clause (“gallantly” by the way, no matter what the anti-adverb partisans say, is an essential word in this sentence, at once highlighting an aspect of Isaiah’s character, helping us to visualize the action unfolding, and once again slowing down the rhythm of the sentence to give it that aforedescribed tension). The details of the second clause, too, give the sentence a fascinating rhythm, “lurid fuchsia padding of this rolling orgy room,” a phrase which not only evokes with a vivid detail what the van looks like but also conveys the “rolling” sensation of this van when it will drive away (“lurid fuchsia” also reminds us that we’re viewing this sentence from Zoyd’s perspective, 1960s Zoyd for whom the ‘80s aesthetic of fuchsia will always be “lurid”). And then we get a relative clause that once again interrupts the sentence, “where she became indistinct among an unreadable pattern of Vomitones and their girlfriends,” which again reminds us that this is Zoyd’s perspective, as he can’t help but try and keep an eye on Prairie, but which also interestingly reflects the rhythm of the sentence more broadly, as Prairie herself is like this relative clause, the one relative clause in this sentence nestled amidst and disappearing into a pattern of independent clauses and modifiers, just as Prairie herself becomes “indistinct” among the others in the van.
Finally then, we come to the last independent clause, the clause which will release all the pent up tension the rhythm of this sentence has built up, beginning with the word “quickly” which sets us up for an increase in speed—but not quite yet, because first we have one more modifier to establish tension, “in an arc unexpectedly graceful,” which not only describes the movement of the van, but also the movement of the sentence itself, which by this point we have to admit is pretty “unexpectedly graceful” (and once again, the anti-adverb people are wrong, because “unexpectedly” is absolutely necessary, forcing us to imagine some big, ungainly van pirouetting away with a surprising elegance). Then, we get the main action of the sentence: the van “turn[s] outward” (“outward” a great word there, as it suggests the van moving away from Zoyd), “tach[s] up” (“tach up” by the way, such an interesting choice to use here, an obscure phrase that refers to an engine revving up—the odd word choice works though, because “tach” feels just old-fashioned enough to give the sentence that strangeness that the word “rev” couldn’t have provided) and then drives away—though before it does, we get the two most essential phrases in the sentence, “like a time machine departing for the future” and “forever too soon for Zoyd.”
First, “like a time machine departing for the future”—in a novel full of references to ‘80s movies, music, T.V. shows, etc., how can this be anything but a Back to the Future reference? The book is set in 1984, and the movie wasn’t released till 1985, but Pynchon wrote this book in 1990, so perhaps this is his cheeky way of making such a reference—it would make sense, after all, when alluding to a movie about time travel if that movie didn’t yet exist in the world of the novel. But for us, readers from 1990 and beyond, Back to the Future is a classic, ‘80s nostalgia looking back at the ‘50s, a conservative reflection of Pynchon’s own nostalgia for the ‘60s. Thus, if we read it this way, the Vomitone van is also a DeLorean, speeding Prairie off into the future and out of reach of Zoyd, who’s still stuck in the counterculture past. And rhythmically, then, the sentence too is like the Back to the Future DeLorean, the held back tension of each modifier like the anticipatory pause just before that silver car disappears with a “boom.”
Before the “boom” though, one last modifying phrase—“forever too soon for Zoyd.” Notice the parallels between “forever” and “for Zoyd,” the two phrases connected with that melancholy bridge, “too soon.” Rhythmically, this not only allows us one last pause before the van and Prairie disappear, but also once again emphasizes the idea of time, the paradox of “forever too soon” a reminder of the ‘60s world that Zoyd and America believed would exist forever but which they lost too soon.
Finally, the end of the sentence: “boomed away up the thin, cloudpressed lane.” Pynchon could have chosen so many words in place of “boomed”—“drove,” “departed,” even “zoomed.” But “boomed” is perfect, because it gives an image of this van exploding away down the lane, just as the sentence explodes to his conclusion. For the past 73 words, we’ve had tension building, and here we get the final verb of the final independent clause, a word on which so much depends—and so, “boomed” gives us not only the right image for the moment but also the right rhythm, a sharp, sudden, succinct word that releases in one syllable all the tension the sentence has built.
All that’s left then is the “thin, cloudpressed lane,” “thin” describing the insubstantiality of Zoyd’s Prairie-less world, and “cloudpressed” a perfectly Joycean adjective, two words combined into one that with its rhythm makes you feel the clouds pressing in around you, the lack of space between the words a reflection of the lack of space in the world that Zoyd now feels, the oppressive forces closing in around his home.
Thus, we have a sentence that through its rhythm not only conveys what’s literally happening, a girl getting in a van and driving away down a road, but also a microcosm of the novel’s larger themes. And so, the sentence isn’t just a rhythmic recreation of the stop and go motion of the van before it zooms away—it’s also a reflection of a man and a generation trying to hold onto a past that has already disappeared. The sentence’s modifying phrases are all attempting to hold back the progress of the independent clauses, just as Zoyd is trying to hold back the progress of time, to keep America and himself in his beloved ‘60s. But, like time, the sentence’s grammar is inevitable—and before Zoyd knows it, that DeLorean will carrie Prairie and America away into the future.