MDMD: truthtelling (WAS Internet Perfidity)

[Doug Millison]

Andrew makes an excellent point about history and the novelist's art.
Pynchon seems to be quite explicit about this in chapter 72 (beginning on
page 695): "Alas," beams the Revd. "must we place our unqualified Faith in
the Implement, as the Tale accompting for its Presence,-- these Family
stories have been perfected in the hellish Forge of Domestick Recension,
generation 'pon generation, till what survives is the pure truth, anneal'd
to Mercilessness, about each Figure, no matter how stretch'd, now how
influenced over the years by all Sentiments from unreflective love to
inflexible Dislike." "Don't leave out Irresponsible Embellishment."
"Rather, part of the common Duty of Remembering,-- surely our Sentiments,--
how we dream'd of, and were mistaken in, each other,--count for at least as
much as our poor cold Chronologies."

I hear Pynchon saying that along with "cold chronologies", myth and
mistakes and deceptions become part of "pure truth"; but I don 't hear him
saying that we shouldn't or can't try to separate out those various threads
and thus gain a deeper understanding of that "pure truth" in all its
facets, reflections, and depths. So, when we find ourselves in a moment
when myth or mistake or deception or fabrication is actually being
compounded with "fact" (a complex and debatable notion, I know about that
tree falling in the forest), we can point it out and discuss it. So, in
this light, part of the "pure truth" of Pynchon is in fact what Jules has
to say about him -- but where do Jules' statements about Pynchon fall on
this spectrum of sentiments, dreams, mistakes, and cold chronology? For
some of us, that's an interesting question. It's a question that Pynchon
has his characters asking again and again, too.

At 4:05 PM 8/8/97, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
Similarly, a history would not be much of a
>history if it did not locate us in the minds of the people's it treats
>of, display us the terrain of the lands it surveys, school us in the
>concepts of the culture it critiques. True, a historian's primary duty
>is to investigate, record and assess the value of source materials but
>the aim in doing so, the whole point of doing so, is to present us,
>readers of history, with the big picture. Not so very different to the
>novelist's art, eh?


D O U G  M I L L I S O N ||||||||||||| millison at online-journalist.com
   Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
   Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
      --Groucho Marx