Prejudices and Caricatures

[davemarc]

At 07:12 PM 11/25/96 +0000, you wrote:
>davemarc writes:
>> 
>> At 05:14 PM 11/25/96 +0000, Andrew wrote:
>> >
>> >[snip] Who says `Pynchon
>> >*would have* written within the prejudices of his time'? Well if
>> >anyone or anything says so it can only be argued with reference to
>> >what was actually written. So where's the evidence?
>
>> For starters, P. wrote most of GR using 20th Century English.  That's the
>> evidence.  Where's the evidence that he somehow managed to liberate his
>> prose from the prejudices or world view embodied in that language?  It's a
>> truism that writers write within the prejudices of their times as reflected
>> by their language.  
>
>That's the evidence??? 

Yup.  Where's your evidence that he liberated his prose from his language
and its built-in (and I do mean built-in) prejudices?

>If C20th English is so riddled with unavoidable
>prejudices then how are you able recognise the existence of such
>prejudice? 

Hey, anyone can spot prejudices in a culture.  I'm not claiming that because
someone lives in a time and place that that person is unaware of the many,
many prejudices or *world views* of that time and place.  Galileo was pretty
good at spotting some widely prevalent ones that happened to be false.

>And if you can then why could not Pynchon. 

I can; Pynchon can.  I'm not saying any of these prejudices or world views
are necessarily invisible.  Though it is possible (though not necessary) to
be unaware of them.

>And why cannot
>both of you, having recognised such prejudice, avoid it? 

I doubt that anyone with a functional linguistic ability can avoid *all* the
prejudices within a language--which include but are not limited to attitudes
like "faggots are evil."  They also include prejudices like "cause and
effect exist," "there is such a thing as snow," "there is no such thing as
snow," "faggots are good," "the earth is the center of the Universe," "time
progresses in months according to the phases of the moon," "time progresses
according to the progress of the sun," "time is relative," etc.  Depends on
the language.   But one can avoid many of them.

>Sorry, but
>your truism is another wheel which does not turn, like original sin
>(who cares whether one is guilty a priori when it's the a posteriori
>sin which causes all the shit). I think you need to come up with a
>better formula to beat yourself with. This one is self-defeating.

Perhaps Andrew will reconsider. If Andrew or myself were discussing built-in
prejudices in P.'s English in contrast with markedly different languages
(say Old English, a Hopi dialect c. 1850, etc.) I suppose the truism would
be even more apparent.
>
>[snip]
>
>> Given that P. cannot help but write "within his times" it's also possible to
>> recognize that, as a (creative) individual, he could still take just about
>> about any attitude about particular subjects (i.e. sexuality), characters,
>> u.s.w.  
>
>Well, it's not given, that's your assumption. Where is the evidence?
>Are you saying that Pynchon never writes "outside of his times"

Yes.  Did Pynchon write at any point prior to his birth?  Or after his
death?  Where is the evidence?  

>i.e. that his writing embodies a set of presumptions which olour all
>of his judgements, which are common to all writers of his generation
>and some of which are not common to people who are 20-30 years
>younger.

I am saying that his writing--his very existence--takes place primarily in a
widely recognizable form of 20th Century English that, like all languages,
shapes the thoughts of everyone raised within that system.  There's a lot of
room for variety, dissent, contradictions, whatever...among the language's
prejudices.  Because languages generally shift slowly over subgroups defined
by time, place, and the tension between standardization and individuality,
there are, in fact, likely to be differences as well as similarities (some
very pronounced).  That's one reason why we can appreciate translations even
though "something gets lost" in the process.  

>Clearly, that's not always the case otherwise Pynchon would
>be just another Joe Schmuck hack writer.  

Hey, the difference between perceptions of hack writers and "artistic" ones
is one of the most familiar examples of prejudices at work.

>But then if he is not always
>tarred with the 1950s/60s brush how are we to decide when he is and
>when he isn't. By presuming that homosexuality is such a difficult
>subject for people of his age that he could never have got round
>everyone else's prejudices? 

I don't believe that that's the only presumption one can make a case for.  I
don't necessarily believe that one could make a strong case for that
presumption.  But who says we must even decide when P. is and isn't a hack
writer when we're looking at his text?

>or by looking at the text and seeing how
>what he wrote stands up to our current oh-so-enlightened and tolerant
>views?

The point is that we can look at his text in many ways.  We needn't look at
P. as some sort of robotic channeler of a pre-determined set of prejudices
of his times (though, interestingly, his own writing addresses the degree to
which people may be viewed that way).  But we could explore the degree to
which he might be.  We needn't, for example, ignore the fact that he wrote
GR about and during a period in which the literary treatment of
homosexuality was even rarer than it is today, and the language used to
address homosexuality differed in many respects.  Just as we needn't ignore
the fact that he wrote the book during the VietNam War and the Presidency of
Richard M....what was that guy's last name?  How does one recognize the
reference?
>
>[snip]
>
>> Anyway, perhaps the notion of a variably distorting lens may be helpful in
>> understanding P.'s characters and why there's some controversy regarding his
>> attitude toward them and their sexual relations. 
>
>Absolutely. And it also means that any definitive answers about
>Pynchon's (i.e. the book's) stance on homosexuality are somewhat
>underdetermined by the available evidence.
>
It's so nice to know that Andrew and I can see eye-to-eye about something. 

Happily,

davemarc