(Fwd) Re: the Nietzsche quote

[Aaron Yeater]

> This is not exactly about TP, I am (temporarily) burned out with TP since 
> the thesis, but I had to respond to 
> this. I like Nietzsche a lot, but am I alone in having gotten the feeling 
> that the more he talks about resentment, revenge, hatred, etc. the more he
> is really nodding and winking at us and saying in effect, "don't 
> take me TOO seriously old boy, I'm really full of the same shit too"?
>						jwh

i agree with you completely--Nietzche's sense of irony keeps us 
honest, prevents us from making the broad metaphysical statements 
that he criticized his predecessors for doing...

interestingly (i think), i do think it links into pynchon (sorry to 
bring you back to thesis-material too quickly), particularly GR.  
GR's levels of meaning are so multiple and orthogonal, the symbolic 
order so intricate and dense, that the ordinary problem of 
interpreting an author's intentions in a text are made all the more 
difficult.  take the BBC radio schedule in 
GR-Weisenberger, if i remember correctly, notes on several occasions 
that what is mentioned in GR as being on the BBC was actually on 
according to a schedule on a certain date, thus confirming Weisenburger's interp. of 
the temporal structure.  but it could be, and we cannot forget the 
possibility, that it is coincidence, or unintentional, etc.  That 
that might just have been a popular song, or just a song he heard the 
tiltle of, or god forbid it might have been a mistake.  and in 
this manner does Pynchon's ironic vision of himself (does he mean it, 
or is it all a big joke?) act as a meta-confirmation of his vision.  
Does the conspiracy control our lives, giving meaning, or are we 
spinning towards meaninglessness, out of control, paranoia our only 
sense of meaning?  
Does the author, 
TRP, control every moment, every sentence and word and phrase and 
reference with a nearly inhuman sense of awareness, or are we just 
imagining meaning, inventing order and structure among shadows to 
ward off our own fears? 
 Or is there a 3rd option, that the author is a savant, controlling 
without knowing he's controlling...and if so, might the conspiracy 
also be a savant, unaware of the totality of itself, each part 
thinking itself the core, the bottom, but always, always there are 
"other agents" and deeper levels of meaning?

Or is that just ultimate deniability, the write hand not knowing what 
the left hand is doing.

my $.02-tanks fer hearin' me out
aaron yeater