Doktor's Rx for GR

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Jimmy's critique of GR is hard to get a handle on.  I won't pretend to have given it a 
thorough rereading, so I may be missing something, but it seems to me that you're 
criticism stems from the book's failure to adhere to certain preconceptions of what you 
what from a novel, or what you think a novel should do,  I remember reading an old 
article on GR, early 80's?  I think it's by Brian McHale and called something like * 
"Gravity's Rainbow": Modernist Reader, Postmodern Text.*  Been years, but I think 
Mchale's arguement runs that the frustration and unreadability GR evokes comes from 
us approaching it w/ traditional novelistic expectations, such as you seem to express: 
expectations about how characters are *supposed* to act--like they're s'posed to have a 
reason for being there, there's supposed to be only as many as we can keep in our mind, 
they're not supposed to just disappear and/or (re)appear at random.  Same goes for plot 
lines and for narrative *centers*. 

 IMO, GR subverts, quite deliberately, all such expectations.  Some of your remarks might 
make this clearer:
>
>Col49 is even more economical in its narrative. 
On what ground sdoes the lack of *economy* in GR imply a lack of quality?  Where does 
economy become an important variable?

 > Still, [CL49's] "map-ness" doesn't
>detract from its being, at its heart, a good mystery story.  The mystery
>story is a form that has captivated humankind since the ancient Greeks.

I might argue that CL49 is an anti-mystery story.  There's no mystery in the sense that 
there's no anwser to questions it poses.  No one comes in at the end to say: *The Trystero 
dun it*  Dunno what to make of that ancient Greek connection, though.  Doubt they 
invernted the notion of *mystery*

>GR has lots of ideas too, but since they are not hung on a framework as
>solid as the earlier novels, the book is ultimately the weaker.

This metaphor really intrigues me: what kind of a*framework* are you referring to?  And 
how can a framework be *solid*?  It seems that you are hearkening to some essentialist 
grounding which apparently exists at the heart of good novels for you.  But if we work on 
your metaphoric lines, we might ask, in a book that has  ideas hung on a solid framework, 
what's the framework hung on?

Glad to have your post to chew over. Please clarify any misreadings on my part.

john m