MDMD[6]: Fatherhood & The Absent Author

[Paul Mackin]

Harrison writes:
Yes. Exactly. This is what I meant by "the Absent Author." The only
thing we know about him is that we don't know anything about him.

The question I was attempting to bring up relied on the identification
of Author as Father, and vice versa. If the child is molded by the
parent as an author molds a book, what happens when the author is
absent?

>>>>Oooops! My previous  reply wasn't directly reponsive to your 
question,  but apparently at least tangentially so by luck.  Hadn't seen
what you were getting at--something more subtle than what was thrashing
around in my mind based on assorted posts of the last few days.

I guess the only thing I can think of right off if to riff a bit on the
sense of absent. True, the author is absent from his readers, a
direct result of the fact that he has chosen to be absent from those
good folks who would very much like to write about and explain him
to the world--namely, the media, literary scholars, etc. But,  can we 
say that Pynch is absent in other significant ways? Does he, for
example,  absent himself from his own writing? This seems like
the question to ask in light of the fatherhood half of your own 
question--I mean the notion that the author function and the
father function are similar and crossover in ways  that we would
be ill-advised to ignore.  So, I will emphasize the point: Has anyone ever detected  an absence of authorial presense in the Pynchonian text?
(I know in some quarters that will be a silly question since of course
the author is . . . oh you know, but suspending judgement on that point
for a second.)  I will put it this way: Might Pynchon be aware of or 
feel some withholding of self in his previous output. Something he
is determined to supply in some way in the future,  and for a reason
that ties into the existence of little Jackson? I don't know but like
you would like to know what others think.

Moreover, is there the possibility that the little one may be preceived as
actual source of that missing ingredient. So we are coming around
to what I know I said above that I don't quite beilieve. But I
will close by saying that your post reminded me of something I faintly
remember from a long ago study of the Romantic Poets, I think it
was, about the Child being the father of the man.

Yes, I too am a father.

				P.