Internet Perfidity (Fiction and history in M&D)

[Australian Studies Centre]

On this argument of literature versus fiction, there is a nice quote by M.
Foucault which gives an interesting tangent on this issue. He is asked a
question about literature, and about the 'literaryness' of his own writing.
He responds that as a historian he writes fiction, and in this: 


the possibility exists for fiction to function in truth, for a fictional
discourse to induce the effects of truth, and for bringing it about that a
true discourse engenders or 'manufactures' something that does not as yet
exist, that is, 'fictions' it. One 'fictions' history on the basis of a
political reality that makes it true, one 'fictions' a politics not yet in
existence on that basis of a historical truth.

What is rather nice about this quote is the acknowledged interdependence
between fiction and politics, and the basis, often, of truth in fiction. I
think the important politics of this quote, and indeed of much of pynchon's
work, is forcing one to question why, in the face of such endless possible
meanings which can be given to an event, in face of a plethora of possible
understandings (ideas enforced especially by the postmodernist camp), do
most of us tend to believe only story, one reason or one answer. It could,
of course, be a conspiracy. 


Mike H.