questions (fwd)

[Tim Ware]

Howdy folks,

So I guess some guy went to HyperArts and decided to send a list of
interrogatories which I'm really to busy to answer. Not that y'all aren't
busy too, understand, but I thought some of you might want to, um, rise to
the challenge.

From: Michael Cassada <tader at webt.com>
To: redbug at hyperarts.com
Subject: questions

1.  the role of parody and black humor:  Pynchon paradies many basic
types of narratives and plot structures familiar to us all: knights
tale, the mythic quest for identity, the Christian story of salvation,
medieval romances, mass market romances.  What do you suspect are his
purposes in these parodies and satires?
2.  why black humor?  Where does this occur and what is its effect?
3.  what does Pynchon mean by "the inanimate"?  Clearly, he uses this
term quite a bit and it must have some deep significance for him and the
book.  How do you understand this?
Pynchon is part scientist in a very modern sense of that term.  If the
following list characterizes modern science, how does Pynchon's work fit
into the descriptions?  Unity gives way to multiplicity, order to
disorder, progress to entropy, continutiy to dicontinuity, the law of
cause and effect to the rule of probability, the ideal of certainty to
the necessity of uncertainty?
4.  Pynchon is so clearly interested in history and concerned with both
the direction of western civilization and the way history gets written.
What role does fascism and its ideas about how history gets made,
written and how, perhaps, it SHOULD be made?  Does the fact that this
book was written during the Cold War have any significance for its
themes and content?
5.  Who are the figures of hope and salvation in this book?  What do
they represent?
6.  What are the relationships to other leterary figures and works:
Eliot and THE WASTELAND, Adams and THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS Kerouac
and ON THE ROAD Graves and THE WHITE GODDESS?
7.  What is fetishism?  What role do you think this whole notion plays
in the book?
8.  WHAT IS V????????
9.  Explain to "Pynchon is difficult because he undermines the very
methods through which we normally approach understanding."