Self-Indulgence

[Adrian Kelly]

 I'd like to add my two cents to the lively debate over Pynchon's alleged
self-indulgence. Certainly, many sections of GR exhibit a diarrheal excess
(a metaphor inspired by P's scatological vision), an excess which the
reader should not necessarily feel compelled to clean up.  However, and
contrary to what one of the posters suggested, much of Pynchon's excess
is meticulously worked out and is a primary constituent of his aesthetics
of protest.  Perhaps we should recall that, despite his skepticism and
indictments of the populist manifestations of sixties counter-culture,
Pynchon was heavily influenced by two of that culture's intellectual
gurus, Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse, both of whom stated that excess
and proliferation  are key components of an oppositional, subversive and
libidinal aesthetic of free play which resists, to borrow some
terminology from Deleuze and Guattari (whose work contains many parallels
to P), the constraining "striations" of the state and of institutionally
enforced repression.
    I just realized that I don't know if this post is going to a private
box or to the list (I'm new to networking).  If this goes to a private box,
please forward so I can 'hear' what other list members think.
    Hope my comments were somewhat helpful.  Let's keep the good discussion
going.
Adrian Kelly
Dept of English
Queen's University,
Kingston, Ont.
Do you write creatively?  Are you interested in interdisciplinary crtical
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