Pynchonian Rorschach

[Vaska]

David Caseras wrote:
>Seems to me Gravity's Rainbow has not been subjected to the same kind of 
>fact-checking as Mason & Dixon, simply because it doesn't even remotely 
>appear to "historical fiction" while Mason & Dixon does, remotely. 

It has, actually.  Ditto for _V_.  By a number of people.  There's all sorts
of critical literature on that around: and it's been available for years
now.  Pynchon's almost obsessive concern with the factual accuracy of his
historical material was one of the first things that really blew a lot of
critics away in 1963, when _V_ came out.  It was unprecedented and for all I
know still unrivalled, in post-WWII fiction.  And it was immediately clear
that what Joyce had done with Dublin, Pynchon was out to do with just about
any place he touched upon in his novels.  Awesome.  And I mean this with all
sincerity.

>Has 
>anyone determined whether Mickey Rooney was *really* at Potsdam?  

Can't remember: would tend to take that as a fairly conventional pomo
"historical" joke, but I could be wrong.

>Whether 
>the tunnels at Nordhausen were *really* in the shape of an SS insigne? 

Check out the lit.  

>What the waters of the mouth of the Elbe, and the surrounding Baltic 
>coastline, are *really* like?  Whether Herero tradition *really* uses an 
>aardvaark burrow as part of a healing/integration process?  What *about* 
>those Soviet-driven alphabet reforms in Kirghizstan, eh?

Accurate on each count.  Breath-takingly accurate, let me add.   

>I claim if the two novels were approached in the same way, the concern 
>for historical accuracy would turn out to be about the same, and about as 
>relevant to the literary intent of the two novels.

Claim away as much as you like, but do get your facts right.  Let's do some
justice to the amount of labour, of sheer dogged work, Pynchon put into
those novels.  Henry Frendo, the leading Maltese historian to date and a
personal friend of mine, assures me that he still can't figure out how
Pynchon was able to get his hands on some of the primary sources he had to
have used for the Maltese sections of _V_.  Concerning a couple of details,
he suspects that Pynchon had some in with an Anglo-Maltese family who had
parts of the archival material in their possession before the island went
independent: or, rather, Frendo knows this but isn't at liberty to give me
any further details.  And I've begged, believe me....

Vaska