and "mu" to you too

[Vaska]

Phillip, I take this as a genuine question, right?  

>You defend the reading well, but if Pynchon is purposefully
>occluding a potential reading then doesn't it come into play?

Sure it may.  More to the point: Barthes and traditional koan-answers were
brought up to invalidate Will's reading of that little conundrum.  Not fair,
I think.  To both Pynchon and Will.

>(Any psychanalytic criticism would certanly follow this lead.)
>Are the workings perfect if there is an attempt to block or cut
>short the multiple resonances? 

Remember Eco, though, and those limits...  Writers or texts, whichever you
prefer, do different things at different times: occasionally, there's a
clear attempt at interpretative control, or at least some steering in some
writerly-purposive direction.  Why not respect that first, and then go on
and produce additional riffs the text can sustain?  That's all.  Is Pynchon
perhaps responding to Barthes, rather than simply relying on him?  It could
be that kind of a conversation, too.  [Esp. since P. does that sort of thing
fairly often: alludes to something so as to critique it, I mean.  And of
course it's dialogical, galore.]

In case anybody misses it: Parke and I share a lot of common ground here....

Vaska