[3] Trying Crying

[Paul Mackin]

>From Craig C.
Oedipa's tale is (in 
these terms) parody rather than pastiche: it parodies the entire Southern 
California detective tale genre, Hammett and Chandler and Gardner and 
all their ilk (and there are a few direct allusions in the text to 
	support this). 

>>>>It can't be parodying Hammett and Chandler, else Oedipa woulda got BEAT UP a few times in the course of solving the case. Moreover the case never exactly gets solved.

DOES have something of the mystery novel in it, though not with the intent to parody. And in retrospect Pynchon would rather he'd toned down this feature IMHO. A weakness of the mystery novel formula is that THINGS GET FIGURED OUT with agonizing specificity. In Crying, THINGS DON'T GET FIGURED OUT with agonizing specificity. Well, the explanations aren't quite AGONIZING but, for me,  they do detract from any real feeling of mystery one might take away from the book. I for one don't think Pynchon was just being cute when he later lamented mistakes he'd made with Crying. Still a good book and guide to GR even though I say here and have said before, it tends to overexplain some of the pet ideas. V. succeeded in being more mysterious.
Still can't quite believe V. was composed first.

Sorry I've become such an "authority" on Crying after having merely reread it once, and all too quickly, after 30 years. :-)

I did appreciate Craig's desire to clarify the meaning of pastishe.Fredric Jameson makes extensive use of the notion  in describing what he calls nostagia films, or la mode retro. "Body Heat" for example.  Says pastishe is blank parody.

			P.
				
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From: 	Craig Clark[SMTP:CLARK at SHEPFS2.UND.AC.ZA]
Sent: 	Monday, March 17, 1997 4:04 AM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Re: Re:[3] Trying Crying

Jumping into the debate between John and Andrew...

John:
  > A couple of points:
  >  (A) I questioned your claim that CL49 is a *pastiche* of a detective story. Noting that the 
  > word means either (1) an imitation or parody, or (2) a hodge-podge,  I asked what sense 
  > you implied, and you snorted back--

Andrew:
  > In sense (1). If it deosn't make any sense I don't knwo what else to
  > try. Anyone speak Pomeranian?

John: 
  > Here you are simply wrong, in English.  There is no attempt in CL49 to parody a detective 
  > story.  Just because there's a mystery doesn't mean it's a parody.Nor is parody of detective 
  > story implied just because there is a quest, a search--after all, your favorite reference point 
  > (besides LudWitt) is that arch-quester the Don of La Mancha.  Would you say the Quixote 
  > is a *pastiche* of a detective story?  The Firesign Theater's NICK DANGER is a pastiche of 
  > a detective story.  Do you understand the difference?

The debate here is about parody vs pastiche, and what one means by 
each term. I've always operated on the principle that pastiche is an 
exercise in homage, whereas parody is mocking or satirical in intent 
(I stand to be corrected). Having said that, Oedipa's tale is (in 
these terms) parody rather than pastiche: it parodies the entire Southern 
California detective tale genre, Hammett and Chandler and Gardner and 
all their ilk (and there are a few direct allusions in the text to 
support this). It's also a parody of a school of thinking about 
literary texts that makes odd statements like "Oedipus is the first 
detective in Western literature" or one which I made once in a paper 
on Shakespeare, "Hamlet's task is to walk the mean streets of 
Elsinore looking for the truth". That is to say Pynchon is parodying 
those who conflate a quest with an exercise in detection.


Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"