V-style

[Andrew Dinn]

Foax,

In response to Adrian Kelly's question re `subversion' I just made a
light-hearted joke that `V.' was `subversive literature' *qua
literature*, because it subverts the expectations it sets up by virtue
of its tone. If the joke works then there must be more than a grain of
truth in it, if not then forget it. Re political (or any other)
subversion I concur with Don Larsson's comments.

Mark Robberds writes:

> I've been list-lurking down in the southern 
> hemisphere for some time now and I thought
> I'd finally dive in on this V-thang.
> It seems that one of the dominant, if slightly
> worn, paradigms of the text is being overlooked
> here. I'm referring to that old fav the animate/
> inanimate dualism.  On this matter you rilly can't
> go past Alec McHoul and David Wills, Writing Pynchon,
> and I'm not just plugging the homegrown product either.
> To grossly simplify their argument: V deals with a 
> crisis in western thought, manifsted in the characters
> Profane and Stencil. Profane fears that the inanimate
> is encroaching upon humanist subjectivity, Stencil,
> that random events are usurping linear history. In both 
> cases a  materially flat style, one which abandons
> animation in favour of bare mechanics, would seem to 
> fit the thematic bill.

This amplifies the point I was trying to state about scientific
explanations of miracles. Only certain terms of description are
sanctioned and they are inadequate to telling the full story. By
virtue of which (or rather by lack of virtu) the failings of the
account are only underlined. I think the scientific/objective critique
is key. The novel is meant to *display* (that's zeigen, not sagen :-)
the pretension, the defeasibility, the limitations of certain claims
to objective validity and significance, notably those commonly
proposed in favour of scientific knowledge. Not that science is
wrong/useless. It just isn't what it's cracked up to be.

If you like you can also think of it in terms of convergence and
divergence. The more you force language and explanation (or, dare I
say it, theory) into a rigid mould, delimiting possibility finer and
sharper, the more room you leave for circumstance/eventuality to
baffle and mystify, piling impossibility on impossibility. There is a
necessary tension between these two opposed processes of convergence
and divergence and usually a consequent oscillation whose period and
amplitude depends, more than anything else, upon the coolness of and
care taken by the observer.

There's a great song on Colourbox's eponymous LP (circa 1980) called
`Just Give `em Whisky' which is a collage of snippets from film
(Westworld, 2001) and TV over a racing backing track (one of the first
attempts to build a song totally from samples). The best line is some
astonished scientist or engineer crying out in stuttering amazement
`Th.. th.. that's not supposed to happen'. At which point the song
yoyos off on another instrumental high.


Andrew Dinn
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there is no map / and a compass / wouldn't help at all