Chaos, Fractals & GR

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

On Sun, 21 May 1995 WildForest at aol.com wrote:

> Sure, we all bring "systems" to our encounter with the Text:  biological,
> technological, and ideological.  The question is do we need to impose new,
> external systems on top of the text?  Especially a text which is overflowing
> with its own systems and counter-systems of analysis?  
It 's less a metter of our desire to "impose . . .systems," more of an 
umitigated response, unavoidable.
> 
> If the critical impulse is merely a phenomenological pleasure, a private,
> onanistic relationship to the book, where the experience and secret knowlege
> of the individual reader is the primary  arbiter of meaning, a kind of home
> movie projected onto the page, a singularity, as TP might say, then so be it.
>  At least, it gives the reader "things to hold on to..."
> 
> Frankly, I think the main thrust of GR moves in an entirely different
> direction.
If the epistemologies that inform my reading follow certain paths, even 
within a larger, more uncertain system that attempts the refuse any such 
event/s, well then, so it goes.  I am not deluded in my understanding as 
to say that I am exempt from acquiring meaning from texts, even 
Pynchon's.  This is not to suggest that you--Jeffrey--or anyone else is.  
When I first read GR, I was bedazzled and caught up in critical comments 
on this evasion of traditional meanings--to the exlusion of my own 
negotiations, however unconcious.  Now, I read a different text 
altogether.  So it goes (thanks to Billy Pilgrim for always allowing an 
easy way out.)

Bonnie