David Thayer

Younger readers may not recall the apex of Japanese monster movies in their original black and white, sort of scary, but really more concerning than frightening. This Golden Age reached a pinnacle with the release of Mothra, a monster who went everywhere with tiny twin fairies, early spin doctors in a sense. The fairies explained Mothra’s intent and sang songs in Japanese; the impact of these tunes was apparent from the facial expressions of the people Mothra had spared. Thank you, Mothra.

According to Pynchon’s publisher his new novel will have something to say about Mothra. There was no mention of Godzilla in the release.

Godzilla was a more unreasonable creature who used his fire breath and trumpeting call to wreak havoc while Raymond Burr reported the news from Tokyo. Eventually Godzilla would wade into the surf when sufficient fire power had been mustered. Godzilla would be back, bigger and badder than ever.

Mothra was more about metamorphosis. One of its super powers was the ability to engulf opponents in a web of string, kind of like an encounter with a large angry knitter. Once everyone was all tangled up the fairies would appear, standing in the palm of someone’s hand and they would explain why Mothra was mad. If only Thomas Pynchon novels came so equipped.

If somewhere in the vastness of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW two singing Japanese ladies had appeared to me I might have finished reading the book and possibly understood at least some of what was happening. Instead of owning the book and packing and moving it more times than I can count, I might have grasped the novel’s central thesis. The singing fairies got me through Mothra, why not Pynchon?

I finished THE SOT WEED FACTOR and TREMOR OF INTENT and sort of finished FOCAULT’S PENDULUM and I definitely got through all of Godzilla. Raymond Burr was helpful there doing his version of CNN 50s style with the hat and the microphone. “Godzilla is smashing Tokyo to bits.” Of course he is. He’s Godzilla.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 21st, 2006 at 7:14 am and is filed under Publishing News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.