Meshugginah posts, and other things sundry

[Vaska]

Tom Stanton in a pugillistic mood: 

>Nice try at a deflection but I'm not buying it. I never suggested that we
>ignore
>the details. 

No?  I must have been misreading you...

>Respond to the point: why are the details so important? And at
>what point does a writer get to invent instead of report?

Disregarding this bizarrely inquistorial tone, I'd say: the actual narrative
line, the plot itself, with whatever complexities or simplicites one likes
to invent, the oddities of the weather, the colour of Mr. Pea's recently
diceased aunt's undergarments that summer she was caught making it with the
stable boy, the.... Want some more?

>What you're saying is not that he's slipping up on research, but that the
>views expressed in GR have become softer, less edgy, maybe even less
>important in the last two books. If you want to stand on this claim, back it
>up, but let's not fall on the sword of details as proof. 

Oh, but I do want to say both of those things.  I was a bit disappointed by
those Laplace/Pitt/Yankee Doodle etc. errors, but that's OK.  As for the
latter, let's wait till some folks cool off and return to a modicum of
civility.  What I've seen in the last little while here doesn't make for an
atmosphere of reasoned debate....  

>> Whenever someone's brought
>>up an example of a certain sloppiness, say, in _M&D_, various people have
>>jumped in to argue -- oh, just about anything to spare Pynchon and perhaps
>>themselves the embarrassment of having to admit that yes, the man has been
>>caught napping.  What is this?  White House spin-doctoring during Reagan's
>>second term?  Now that's what I'd call embarrassing.
>
>davemarc's useful post on this seems to indicate TRP screwed
>up the use of the word. Fine, he made a mistake in a work of fiction. 
>What % of MD has factual flaws? Does this invalidate the whole thing? 

I don't go for this percentual/statistical type of criticism.  Sorry.  Some
of the points I've tried to make are [1] Pynchon's goofs are not the end of
the world; [2] we might as well accept that he's made a number of them in
_M&D_ rather than dance circles around them; [3] we might also consider why
he should have got a little sloppy since _GR_ and what, if anything, that
might indicate about his relation to things historical; [4] is there
something of political gravity and value [as many of us felt was the case
with _GR_] in Pynchon's last two novels.  Eric, for instance, feels that the
episode with the Vrooms has precisely such gravitas -- I don't.  But I'm
interested to see a real discussion of what Eric has pointed to.  It might
lead me change my mind, it might not.  But this kind of posturing and fist
waving certainly won't do a thing for any of us.  

>If Jules had not raised the specific objection, based on his experiences,
>would it ever have come up? 

I don't know.  The specific objection: doubt it.  The wider issue: I hope it
might have.  

>And on what basis do we judge the author's
>perspective on the subject? Is "Heart of Darkness" any less a story because
>someone objected to it?

You'll have to read Achebe's articles and make up your own mind on that score.

>No clue what point you've tried to make...

It seems beyond repair, I'm afraid.  

>We have no basis for assuming he left anything in, or to what degree.

As I said: put it down to some quirk on mine, but I can't imagine and have
yet to come across a writer who's pulled off what you originally claimed,
i.e. a total disconnect between life and art.  Doug's recent post on this
was very eloquent and clear: I have nothing to add.

>My point was that he has made a very deliberate effort to keep his
>personal life at a distance from the texts he's created, & I have to
>believe all that trouble has a very distinct purpose: to avoid discussions
>about how he lived being used to judge what he wrote. 

Probably true.  For me, this is a relatively minor issue in the sense that I
don't feel duty bound to honour Pynchon's wishes on that.  I find the fact
that he is an American writer, a male, a Caucasian, of a certain age and
background all useful and in some respects "orienting" information that
pertains to his fiction, too.  

>No one said (& I never said) the work shouldn't be examined & critiqued.
>I question what tools are used. A few factual errors, which I contend are
>in any published work at any point in time, don't invalidate it. Jules'
>comments
>can be taken in what ever context you like, but they are one person's POV and
>I would contend it isn't a very objective POV at that. If you have specific
>examples,
>run 'em up the pole...

Examples of what?

Vaska