pynchon and (versus) his material

[Paul DiFilippo]

I'd like to start a new thread which has been preoccupying me for 
a while.  Maybe if I infect _you_ guys with the meme, it'll let me
be.
Here 'tis:  do we on the list or TRP's critics in general err in
ascribing too much importance to his choice of subject matter,
specifically the role of WWII and rockets, etc, in his magnum 
opus?
I think the best way to illustrate this notion is in a roundabout
fashion with an anecdote about John Barth.
In Barth's _The Friday Book_, a nifty collection of his essays
(and for the mathematically amused, the essay concerning the
exact timing of Scherazade's pregnancies is a must), he relates
how history professors were always coming up to him after the
publication of _The Sot-Weed Factor_ and asking where he had 
studied history, under whom, where he had published, what he
might think of such and such bit of trivia known only to experts,
etc.  Barth tells how his total research consisted of reading
about one and a half non-fiction books on the period and of course
a chunk of 17thc fiction.  The veil of expertise he cast was just 
that:  a magician's scrim.
Now, we all know how our boy Ruggles loves to dig thru the old
Baedeckers, etc, for verisimilitude.  But what I'm rying to hint
at is an element of _arbitrariness_ in his choice of, say WWII
as a venue.  Just as Barth never returned to 17thc America for his
further fictions (okay, okay, there _are_ further references,
especially in his tie-all-the-threads-together LETTERS), so it
is likely that TRP will never return to WWII in his future
fictions.
This attitude/choice/prediliction (to find a venue/period/set
of historical-geographical circumstances that fascinates and
then "work it up") seems to distinguish a writer like TRP from
say a true obsessive such as Thomas Wolfe (the First).  And yet
sometimes we tend to treat Pynchon's "obsessions" on the same level
as someone like Wolfe's.
The writer critic Samuel Delany has identified this "instant expert"
kind of verisimilitude as being a key invention in making primitive
SF more modern, a kind of discovery of fire for a certain literary
genre.  (He traces it back to JK Huysmans, of all people.)  Without
being able to isolate and reproduce just the right critical
borrowed fact/emotion/observation relevant to the period/character
in question, SF (with which Pynchon of course is allied) would
have been stuck in a kind of Poe/Verne didacticism forever.
Somehow, this all ties in in my mind also with Henry James's
observation that "a writer is someone on whom nothing is lost."
TRP is, by this definition, a writer par excellance.
I think that disappointment with _Vineland_ might stem in part
from its lack of certain "obsessions" we identify with TRP.
Of course, tropes, symbols, etc do recur in TRP's work.  But I don't
think that we will ever be able to nail down exactly what
TRP's proper subject is.  Core concerns, yes.  But not likely
subject.
Which is why it would not surprise me if he really _were_ 
writing a novel about the Mason-Dixon line!

--
Paul Di Filippo/2 Poplar St./Providence, RI 02906/401-751-0139
"Real eyes realize real lies."