GR's Moby-Dicks

[D. Franke]

I am intrigued by Dinerstein's comparison of GR and Moby Dick and now am 
wondering if they may fall under the rubric (or possibly exemplify) 
Barthes' idea of "white writing." However, I am unaware of what this 
entails. Does anyone know where this occurs in Barthes? I know the phrase 
but have not been able totrack it down. -Damon Franke

On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Joel Dinerstein wrote:

> This is my first post to the list -- I just joined for the group read -- so
> I'm sorry it's a bit on the lengthy side.  But jeez, it's nice to be goin'
> through GR with a motley crew.  So, then...
> 
> 
> In response to the coupla queries on the relationship of Moby Dick to GR....
> 
> In my last read of GR, I realized Moby Dick is in the very
> foundation of GR, from chasing down "whiteness" (pick up your free melanin
> test kit at the door) to looking for some sort of new American malehood
> on the (watery) road -- 'cause ain't nothin' worth doin' around
> the ol' Puritan home.
> 
> To wit:   GR's whole opening scene of males waking up and stroking each
> others bananas for breakfast reproduces Moby Dick's utopian male democracy
> scene on the Pequod when the men are all a-wash in sperm oil.  The
> Pequodniks are so delirious with happiness as they collect the sperm oil
> from the whale, and rub it on themselves and each others, they almost
> hallucinate with joyous homoeroticism.  In GR, Pynchon grounds this male
> bonding in war, I suspect because war is the ancient social basis for
> all-male bonding
> (that hunter vs. gatherer thing).  Maybe that's a bit much (it even sounds
> too PC to me), but still the novel
> clearly starts in He-Land with Pynchon joyfully narrating the womanless
> college-dorm-ish paradise of guys farting, belching, snarfing, joking,
> cigarettes and coffee on everyone's breath, etc.
> 
> Obviously, Pynchon's dishing up the phallacy fast and hard and tongue in
> cheek here (and soft and mushy for breakfast).... phallics phalling from
> the sky and come a-croppin' on the roof and protruding from pajamas,
> bananas bringing the boys together like the hooked ring of Josephine
> Baker's skirt.  The bananas chain the boys together (all chemistry puns
> intentional) like some sort of dying Iron Age bond; just as the
> symbolic post-war "bond" will be the corporate taffy that opens up the
> Counterforce section.  I think not just *the*"Iron Age" is imploding here,
> but lots of iron "ages" -- the Ages of Conquest, Exploration,
> Colonialims, etc. -- each of which is tied up in certain dying visions of
> Euro-American manhood (Rational Man, White Man, Self-Controlled Man, etc.).
> 
> Pynchon's a late-breaking Beat writer, after all, and his generation of
> postwar "cool" rebels
> were out looking for a new version of manhood far from The [Vietnam]
> War's or The Firm's.  They would find much that was cool  -- language,
> music, body
> movement, philosophy and bogosity -- in non-white ethnic male cultural styles
> (esp. African-American and Native American).  So, like the original Ishmael
> -- that Biblical exile whose father banished him from home -- Slothrop, the
> Beats and their hippie heirs hit
> the road looking for a new way to be far away from their long-forgotten
> father.  As for Melville's Ishmael, his frank admiration of the non-white
> "main men" of Pequod's
> harpoon squad made a seminal contribution to the confused American amalgam
> of primitivism and acculturation that Pynchon harpooned for his own uses.
> 
> Which is to say....
> 
> In-coming *male*, indeed.
> 
> But I do go on.  Sorry about blathering on so.  Lookin' forward to your
> comments.
> 
> 
> Joel Dinerstein
> jdinerstein at mail.utexas.edu
> 
> 
>