Meshugginah posts, and other things sundry

[Tom Stanton]

At 02:22 PM 7/5/97 -0300, Vaska wrote:
>...OK, and for starters: are we reaching new heights of idolatry that we
can't
>take it when Pynchon screws on a word? [ s n i p ]  if you're setting
>out to produce some heavy-duty surrealistic effects and narratives, the
>first thing you have to make sure is to get your details absolutely right.
>No ifs, buts or maybes about it.  To see a master do it, have a look at some
>of Angela Carter's short stories or _The Magic Toyshop_, for example.  

Would you have us dismiss Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" because he
got some entomology wrong? Or that cockroaches would by physically
incapable of speech?  Really now, who set this standard on details? The
artist may choose to start with highly accurate detail and then twist them
or distort them to great effect, but that is just one approach. William 
Burroughs, a very surrealist sort of satirist, dismisses all this sort of
false set ups & plunges us into his worlds with little or no worry about
"the details" except as he chooses to portray them.

>It's hard work, surrealism, when done well.  Pynchon himself would be the
first
>to agree, which is precisely why he goes to the trouble of researching his
>stuff backwards and forwards, and then some more.  Since _GR_ he's been
>caught napping a couple of times -- as I think Steelhead tried to say some
>months ago [am I misreading you atrociously, oh Man of Steel?].  It's not
>the end of the world, I think, and I for one don't mind a bit that Jules
>corrected my misapprehension on that score.  

It's not that folks can't accept he's screwed up "a word" but the contention
(by Jules as I recall) that he routinely screws up the use of words. Jules 
cites the mis-use of "meshugginah" and then claims that TRP does this
all the time.  He complains that "Vineland" isn't accurate reportage as
further support. Finally, he reads GR as a callous attack on some of his
friends & concludes TRP is an insular outsider who misuses language 
routinely. *That's* what gets folks to flaming.

>I'm also the last reader, or member of this list, who could claim to know
>whether or not Pynchon got the NC drug scene right.  I just don't have the
>background and find it fascinating that, once again, all hell's broken loose
>because it seems Pynchon might have been faking it.  I never thought
>_Vineland_ was about the NC drug scene, but it certainly does touch on
>politics here and there, so the question of how Pynchon has chosen to
>portray that time and that place is not a trivial one at all.  And satire
>has nothing to do with this either -- there's too much going on in
>_Vineland_ to straightjacket the novel inside any neat generic category.
>Etc.  

First, I've never been a big "Vineland" fan in part because I think TRP 
glossed over a key part of the late 60s-70s political dissolution in this
country, and IMHO "Vineland" is most certainly about the political collapse
of his generation. The "accuracy" of the NC drug scene is based on Jules'
contentions about his experiences, & that TRP misused or misrepresented
the scene, which I contend is nonsense. It isn't that we cannot face the
criticism -- I can find a lot I don't like in "Vineland" -- but that the
basis of
the critique is one person's recollection, supported as ever by the fact that
he writes more clearly, more truthfully, and more sincerely than TRP. Others
who have chimed in on their NC experiences in support of TRP's rendition
tend to be ignored and/or shouted down. 

[s n i p ]
>I also tend to agree with Jules that Pynchon's novels are a world to
>themselves, that there is a vision at work here whose relation to the world
>of lived life is not quite as simple as I used to believe.  [And I never
>imagined it was simple.] Authenticity may be a red herring, the wrong word,
>I think.  But Pynchon does make certain claims about the writer's ability to
>get the truth of that lived life in a way that may escape a "mere"
>historian.  In _M&D_ he goes to the trouble of spelling that claim out,
>staking a territory for himself as a truth-teller of sorts.  Which is not a
>small claim to make.  Wherever it touches on our political choices, on the
>possibilities and realities of what we do to one another as political
>beings, it's as serious as it can get.  Which is why _Vineland_ remains, for
>me, such a thin and unsatisfactory work.  It's an all too easy parody of a
>time and things Pynchon does not seem to have wanted or been able to know
>more intimately.  We all pay for the risks we refuse to take, and writers
>pay for them by. . .    Well, you get my drift.

Please show us the text where TRP claim of the "writer's ability to get the 
truth of that lived life in a way that may escape a 'mere' historian" in
any of his
work. TRP appears to have gone to great lengths to leave himself & his 
personal life out of the discussion altogether in order to focus on the text, 
not on whether he was there & living the life he's written about. There are
no relationships between TRP's "life" and what he wrote, and this disconnect
is deliberate. Jules' complaint is that TRP did not live the radical life,
took no
risks, stayed on the sidelines and went to the library for his facts, and thus
cannot have got it right, or, worse, manipulated the facts and the scene to
create his own world. At the risk of offending, I must now say -- DUH?! Of
course he did! That is the whole point of the work of creating fiction -- to 
create *your* world, tell *your* story, and deliver *your* message, making 
choices as you go along. If you do the job well enough, people are drawn 
into your world & the rest is up to you. They either keep coming back for
more or you end up on the remainder table or out of print. To attack the world
TRP created because it does not fit Jules' memory, or that it might lack the
historical accuracy of a work of non-fiction is ludicrous. These are, as
Joaquin 
Stick pointed out earlier, satires, not reportage. TRP has every right to
create
these works in any way he sees fit. Does he screw up? Sure. So what? The
vast majority of it is well researched, well thought out, well realized, and 
a delight to read.  


>One last comment: how many of the other people on the list have read
>Pynchon's article on Watts?  It came out in the LA Times, some time in 196?,

Loved it! A great piece of journalism.

>I think.  It's as moving as any piece of fiction he's written and miles
>better than either _Vineland_ or _L49_.   Compare it to _M&D_ and then let's
>talk about what's happened to Pynchon's human and political vision in the
>meantime.  And why, at 60, he feels he should use a cheap little trick
>afforded by 18th-century orthography to get a little mileage out of that
>"Other," for example.  There are all sorts of seductions in this world, and
>gorgeous prose is an aphrodisiac in its own right.  Which may be all that we
>are getting in _M&D_, I'm afraid.    

I'm still going through MD for the 1st time so let's cross swords on this
at another time. I assume you think TRP's gone soft...