MDMD[6]: Fatherhood & The Absent Author

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	Paul Mackin

>The idea that P's fatherhood per se might have changed his writing
>(expressed by somebody recently) seem to me unlikely. I think what
>we are seeing at work is greater maturity and skill, which often come
>in time, with or without the arrival of children. 

This is the very observation that led me down this particular primrose
path. In my own life, the birth of my children has been without doubt
the most significant event in my development as a person. Marriage,
schooling, death of parents--nothing and I mean _nothing_ can touch the
sudden total 24/7 responsibility for another human life that becoming a
parent entails. It is a sobering event indeed.

One is forced to understand, for instance, that anger--political,
social, filial, matrimonial--is a luxury one can no longer afford. Three
quarters of parenthood consists of learning to curb rage. There is no
time for it, and no one gains--and innocent bystanders suffer--by its
gratuitous expression. The consequences of parents who _failed_ to
acquire this particular skill are visible all around us. 

What I remark in Pynchon's later work, and in M&D in particular, is
evidence that this very process has been at work. I speculate that the
cause of the lessening of the rage is marriage and parenthood. It may
very well be that, as you say, it is general maturity, mellowing with
age, that is causing this newfound gentleness. As I mentioned earlier, I
may be projecting like a madman, but I still feel there is something
there.

I agree that M&D is not an epistle to Jackson. I do think, however,
there is more Thomas Pynchon the _man_ in M&D than there is in his
earlier works. Not TRP the Signifier, or the Myth, or the Narrative
Voice, but the man himself. The sequence from V through CoL49, GR,
Vineland and M&D has been a steady stripping away of layers of irony,
misdirection, artifice and self-mythologizing, accompanied by cessation
of pointless anger, easier forgiveness of failure, and greater capacity
for love. This has been a journey with Jackson as its goal.

And if you'll forgive me some opacity: if you don't have a child, that
last sentence will be gibberish.

And I stand by my interpretation of LeSpark and Cherrycoke as two
warring sides of Pynchon's personality. I'm too proud of that one to let
it go. And what's more, identifying Cherrycoke the Trickster Storyteller
with Pynchon himself is a rich vein that I think we would do well to
mine.

Harrison

P.S. I hope this isn't a spoiler, but Chapter 26 makes me want to hold
my lit Bic overhead, whoop, and bring the band back onstage for just one
more encore.