pynchon-l-digest V1 #721

[kellner at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

Subject: MDMD(4) - Questions - "Geometry" "Darkness"

> 106-27    "...all being reduced to Geometry and optical Illusion, even
> what is waiting there all around, what is never to be nam'd directly."
> What is this?  The sea?  God?

S Maas answers:

I think it's the Ocean that's "never to be nam'd directly"--while you are
making port that is, presumably due to the fear that naming a possibly
malevolent force may give it power over you.  The Ocean is named in the
following paragraph, once M&D are safely on shore.

*********
I would add that the passage, metaphorically, treats one of the major
themes of the book: mapping and its other, the limits of representation
and impossibility of mapping, of capturing completely, that which one is
trying to map. This problem becomes especially acute in the America
episodes where M&D try to map what no man has mapped before, the
wilderness, the other of 'civilization', that which their maps order,
dissect, grid and quantify AND are constantly coming up against the limits
of their mapping, what is left out. This also has something to do with
Pynchon's mapping of the Mason and Dixon story, or anyone writing history
or fiction about historical characters/events etc and one of the dramas of
M&D is Pynchon realizing that there is much left out, that it is
impossible to tell all, to map a human life-- the attempt to try is one
reason that it goes on so long...


 Douglas Kellner, Dept of Philosophy, Univ of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
kellner at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  fax: 512 471-4806
Web sites: Postmodern theory= http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kellner/pm/pm.html
Critical theory= http://www.uta.edu/english/dab/illuminations/