Less is More...

[Andrew Dinn]

Bonnie Surfus writes:

> Regarding "epiphanies," I suppose I agree with Chris and Jan. I think.  I 
> recall understanding that the only epiphany in CL 49 was getting to know 
> (for the reader) what the title referred to.  

> The Tristero/WASTE issue--they are manifestations of Oedipa's (as I get 
> your reading) mind that help her deal with a lack of consensus and 
> resistence, an essential tension, seems likely and I guess I had this in 
> mind as I read.  but this did not dismiss the possibility of an acutal 
> Tristero and an acutal WASTE.  That, because it's Pynchon, because it CA, 
> and because reality is, after all, a construction.  

This seems to me rather too `mentalist' a reading of what is at stake,
albeit a reading which is indeed affirmed by the text - which I take
to be Pynchon's reason for downrating the book. I don't agree that the
Tristero and WASTE are manifestations of Oedipa's mind which may or
may not connect with one of many possible actualities. Unfortunately,
they are just manifestations of the author's clumsiness. The unreality
is not in the terms posed by Oedipa's dilemma but in the dilemma
itself.

Oedipa asks herself 'Shall I project a world?' Unfortunately, she has
no such choice and nor do you nor I nor TRP. The question assumes that
reality is (self-)consciously constructed, chosen from alternatives,
equally possible in theory but ultimately found not to be actual
possibilities because *unreal* - hence not really possible. We are on
the verge of requiring unactualized impossibles, round squares etc. if
we follow this route.

Oedipa's deconstruction, reconstruction process cannot follow a
reasoned process of investigation and deduction because the task is to
set the very framework within which the question as to what is
reasonable or not can be framed and answered. Catch 22. But by the
same token the book itself fails if it tries to present this as being
the dilemma. Pynchon has not so much pulled the ladder out from under
himself as the rug. `The Crying of Lot 49' fails to sort out this
misunderstanding, perhaps more because Pynchon did not yet know how to
state it clearly than because he did not see through it. `Gravity's
Rainbow' hammers it home with all the required antecedent corollaries,
independent lemmas, redundant hypotheses and necessary non-sequiturs.



Andrew Dinn
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true :- (P ; \+ P) =\= (P ; \+ P) :- true.