Absences in VL

[Greg Montalbano]

>>But Pynchon does the same in GR and M&D.  Part of his "technique", you might
>even say.  Any thoughts about these absences as a literary device?
>
>Scott Badger
>


>From THE TIDEWATER TALES: A NOVEL by John Barth...

{Writer Peter Sagamore is being pitched by CIA agent Douglas Townsend to
become his (Townsend's) confessor in matters relating to agency skulduggery}

Sagamore:  Even for your literary depository, you should have an American
Solzhenitsyn.  My stories aren't ABOUT those things.

Townsend:  About!  (Douglas Townsend's pink face briefly reddened ...the
nearest Peter Sagamore would ever see him approach the emotion of anger.)
Let them not be (he said then, calmly).  There are different ways to be NOT
ABOUT.  Your stories are not about the Holocaust, either, for example;  if
you were a Jewish writer who'd survived the camps, your stories might still
not be about the Holocaust -- but they'd be not about it in a different way.