MDMD[6]: Fatherhood & The Absent Author

[David Casseres]

Harrison Sherwood  sez
>I have always understood Pynchon's famed reclusiveness as an _artistic_
>stance, a peculiarly (neurotically?) insistent comment on art
>itself--namely, that the artist is unnecessary to the the art. Think about
>critical theories prevalent when Pynch was a student, theories that asked
>whether we need to know the author of a work before we can judge its
>merits. (John Crowe Ransom? The New Criticism? It's been quite a while; I'm
>a little vague....)

Right on the money, I think.  I'm just a few years younger than Pynchon, 
and when I was in college they still taught us the New Criticism, with 
the central idea that you have to approach the work of art as a complete 
thing in itself, without using knowledge about the author to explain it.  
While this can be carried to ridiculous extremes, like pretending to be 
completely ignorant of the entire cultural matrix in which the work was 
created, it still appeals to me, and I think many writers in Pynchon's 
age group have been reticent about commenting on their works, or saying 
much to the public about themselves.  Few to the same extent as Pynchon 
or Salinger, of course, and there are always egregious exceptions like 
(ugh) Mailer.  Pynchon and Salinger have the advantage, if one wants to 
avoid interviews and so forth, of not being teachers; possibly others 
would be equally "reclusive" if they didn't have to stand up in front of 
classrooms and lecture-halls all the time.


Cheers,
David