red herrings

[Craig Clark]

Diana York Blaine <dyb0001 at jove.acs.unt.edu> asks:

> How do we know McGuffins aren't McGuffins?  It seems a tad overdetermined
> to say the quest in a quest novel isn't fundamental to the plot simply
> because it lacks conventional closure or isn't apparently grounded in any
> traditional sense. V. and Lot 49 seem to be riffs on our need to work
> towards order (obviously), so how can we say that work is tangential to
> the novel's structure or import?  The impossibility of order that
> both texts suggest resonates because of the narrative function of the
> quest.  And besides, I don't think they're about the impossibility of
> order, but no damn snow fell last night so I've actually got to go
> and teach now.

Today's effective temperature here, humidity etc taken into account, 
is supposed to be 41C, but admittedly it looks like the mother of all 
thunderstorms is on the way... But to the issue at hand, which is a 
witty comment on McGuffins in _The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction_ 
edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls: to the effect that McGuffins 
usually provide the basis of the plot in the middle volume of a 
trilogy...



Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"