Two Weirdoes

I've just emerged from under Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day".

It feels like a library shelf crashed down on me and I've slowly eaten my way out to daylight through the musty pages of ancient boys adventures with titles like "The Troublesome Three and the Yellow Menace." But what begins like a not-exactly-timely parody of Tom Swift adventures becomes truly Pynchonian (i.e: a novel about pretty much everything), and if the mere size seems intimidating, I can testify it's worth it: 1000+ pages, and nary an indigestion. Pynchon has a reputation for difficulty, but that eludes me: behind the large casts and errant narrative he's positively EASY to read, and he's a prankster first and foremost. Often he's even sophomoric: He may be discussing the fourth dimension, but he interrupts himself, entranced with a fart joke.

But it's a funny one.

Another Thomas, Thomas Harris, has returned to the thing he does best. Or the thing he used to do very well. Or the only thing he can do, in fact: provide something for Anthony Hopkins to do when he's not throwing his gravitas around the screen in increasingly samey characters.


"Hannibal Rising" charts Hannibal Lecter's childhood youth in spastic, screenplay-ready episodes that made me forget that Harris was once a really gripping writer of thrillers. This time even the gorier moments are sort of bloddless. Worse of all, the book explains away Hannibal's seductive brand of evil by using a comic book trope fans of the X-Men (and Magneto) will recognize.

Yes, you guessed it: The Nazis did it.

In case you doubt my meaning, the first Thomas' book is the one to go with.