Self-Indulgence

[Jeffrey K. Carney]

At 11:20 AM 8/9/94 +0100, Andrew Dinn wrote:

>Sorry to butt in on a debate I missed the start of (our network was
>down for a few days) but I really dislike this picture of the author
>as a pilot leading his/her readers. I mean even if someone produces a
>map and hands you a compass that doesn't mean you automatically start
>walking, does it.

Well, I'm glad you dislike it, since you seem to have missed the spirit of
my comments.  Perhaps my choice of analogies might have been better, but
heh, this wasn't a master's thesis, now was it.  I suppose what I really
meant was that a writer is an instigator, an initiator, someone who makes a
journey possible.  The extent to which the writer then tries to lead and to
which we as readers choose to follow is of course up for grabs.

>Contrariwise, an apparent jumble is yours to investigate, dissect,
>reconstruct in your own likeness, whatever *you* can make of it. It
>would be contemptuous if such an attempt were impossible, if the
>jumble was real not apparent, but when, as in the case of Ulysses, it
>is all too readily possible, everything fits neatly into place, or, as
>in the case of Gravity's Rainbow, it is always tantalisingly on the
>edge of possibility you can hardly accuse the author of mumbling into
>his beard or farting in the reader's face. The very complexity of
>these novels indicates a concern to engage the reader.

...on the edge of possibility?  I see what you're saying, but I just
suspect that you want too much to believe in some sort of inviolable
authorial genius, much as students of New Criticism felt it was necessary
to resolve every nuance into some coherent theme.  Get real.  As far as I
can see it, in 1994 we are allowed to recognize genius (Pynchon, Joyce,
Burroughs, etc) without having to defend every aspect of genius.  You
really think Pynchon never wings it?  That every word masterfully fits into
some puzzle, and that those of us who get confused from time to time just
don't see it?  Authors are people, after all.

I'm reminded of an essay I wrote my sophomore year on the use of color in
Lindsay Anderson's film _If..._, where black-and-white is interspersed with
color, giving a dream-like effect to sequences that are probably dreams,
and a correspondingly dream-like effect to sequences that might or might
not be real.  With a bit of ingenuity, I showed how the use of
black-and-white had been carefully crafted to call into question our
pre-suppositions about the nature of art and reality.  Then I read an
interview in which Anderson explained that the film had run over budget and
they'd been forced to resort to B&W film stock, which they then mixed into
the film almost at random, so as not to reveal their dilemma.  I don't
think this must reduce one's experience of the film.  As someone suggested,
a "readerly" response is always possible, and the experience is still
engaging.  But the genius in this case turns out to be the viewer (not just
me; I mean any creative viewer) much more than the auteur.

>Pynchon's response to this is not to start labouring over and
>promoting his own system but to *show how* one system will never be
>adequate, how we are always putting up scaffolding, knocking down one
>erection to make way for another, continually changing coordinates,
>bypassing inconsistencies, switching from system to system in order to
>survive.

Actually, you seem to minimize his work by trying to plug it into what is
after all a pretty simple formula here.  Heck, this is true of Joyce,
Heller, Barth, Beckett, etc.  One thing that distinguishes Pynchon from
this crowd is his special brand of humor ... and I'm inclined to think that
sometimes that means trying to pull a fast one on us, his readers.  But so
what if he does?  Talking into one's beard can be interesting for some. 
But I've known too many writers too well to think for a minute that all
writers don't indulge in beard-talking at one moment or another.  Even
Shakespeare, even Pynchon.  That doesn't have to make them less great. 
Just human, that's all.

--Jeff