M&D linguistic paper

[amazing at mail.utexas.edu]

Hmmmm.
>Todd Meigs writes:
>> . . . My professor seems to think I will dive into it only to find
>> the topic runs no deeper then TRP having fun by fucking around with
>> the words to amuse himself (and us, I suppose).

and Andrew inserts:
>I think he may be right. I have just been looking through Pynchon's
>`tarpaulin'*** in chapters 5-7. He appears to have mixed up several
>nautical terms and also used words which the OED dates to C19.  If
>this is typical (and given some anachronisms in the first 4 chapters I
>suspect it may well be) then, astounding as his vocabulary is, it does
>not appear to be based on careful scholarship. i.e. he's just fucking
>around to amuse himself (and us).
>*** a term for nautical language from another author who was a lover
>of `tarpaulin', William Golding.

And Thomas parries with
>I do not agree. You know, he uses words and phrases of 20C, too, and
>what for? Well, first, his transitions are so smooth that it definitely
>is not just fucking around but well thought through. So, why all this?
>It seems to me that by mixing the styles of different eras in such a
>smooth fashion suggests that he wants to make of it a more or less
>homogeneous body of texts which is itself a historical statement, saying
>we are not so far apart; that there is a link between mid 18C and lat
>20C, quite possibly in the field of relationships of mysticism and
>enlightenment (science). But this is also a recurring theme w/TRP.

I'm probably the last critic who should be saying this--what with my last
several papers arguing on the side of Sean Burke in favor of allowing the
author back into discourse, und also wik my absolute disgust with these
doddering old New Critics always muttering "intentional fallacy" as though
it were some sort of ward against the possibility that someone might point
out an authorial disagreement with their puerile interpretations--BUT maybe
you shouldn't concern yourself so much with what TRP is doing.  Just
examine the interplay of the language.  You might find the results more
fruitful than trying to decode TRP's method.

All of TRP's novels have shown a penchant for mixing languages:
engineering with psychology with literary discourse with pop culture with
counterculture et and cetera.  So now we have a Pynchon novel that mixes
the languages of three centuries and various parts of the worlds.  Hey, my
head's still spinning over all the possibilities encompassed in the
multilingual "mu."

So, Todd:   illegitimi non carborundum est.

dgg
University of Texas at Austin
Recovering Medievalist
PostPostModernist