mandalas

[Granville Ganter]

Don't the mandala shapes in GR also bear on Pynchon's letter, reprinted 
in a book by David Seed, about the different shaping metaphors of Western 
and African experience?  At the time Pynchon wrote the letter he claimed 
a basic antipathy between the Cartesian grids of the West and the 
circular structure of African villages.  The circularity of Stencil's 
narrative/vision/quest strikes me as less analogous to the tribal 
experience Pynchon refers to than the inherent circularity of 
the type of analysis he tends to perform--the results are anticipated by 
the structure of the question--telos in Method (see Paul Maas on textual 
Method).  Then again, perhaps African architype and analytic methodology 
actually merge in Stencil's quest. 
   
Of course in the complexities of 
GR, neat distinctions between two cultures\mindsets get scrambled 
around even more than in V or Lot 49.  What I like about GR is its 
cosmopolitan flavor.  But I think 
the very political Pynchon, who talks about the abstracting and analytic 
text-gazing Western Mind which caused the Boer 
war, WW 1 and 2, and Vietnam in his _letter_, is also quite apparent in GR.

G. Ganter, CUNY Grad Center