GRGR(3) talking dog 44.2 - a bone to pick

[rj]

I guess I'm being unnecessarily dogmatic now, dogged at the very least,
but

Paul wrote
>
> >Yes, the whole thing's very surreal or unreal--even if by some chance
> >Keith's was the ONLY interpretation--that is, there was no talking dog at all
> >but only Pointsman projecting one--because what I ask is MORE out of place
> >than a behaviorist positing consciousness in a dog???? In a human either
> >for that matter though that seems unavoidable.

To which Keith W replied:
> 
> But I never claimed that Pointsman projected the dog, nor the speech of the
> dog.  I was concerned with the "Memory, or reflex" line.
> 

Paul thought he'd been barking up the wrong tree, however, Keith had
also written

> it wouldn't
> be surprising to find Pointsman narrating the dog's thought-process.
> Perhaps he is calculating the dog's reactions (in the narrative) and thus,
> seeing that the dog will leap, calls for the sponge.

 and this:

> I don't think it
> makes these passages any less difficult to attribute authorship to him [i.e. Pynchon]
> I'll agree (as I have earlier) that it is possible that this is a
> third-person omniscient narrator revealing the dog's POV, I just also see
> hints that it may be being indirectly narrated through Pointsman.

and this:

> The possible
> dialogue at 42.9-10 "(still raw, still needs licking)" may, however, be from
> the POV of the dog or from an indirect narrative by Pointsman.  It's
> certainly a surreal enough novel to have a talking dog, but it's also a
> complex enough narrative in the novel to have a framed narrative (if you
> will) through Pointsman.

Paul's and my 'mistake' had some foundation at least, I'd venture. 

Keith now summarises his position as follows: 

> I've been suggesting this throughout this thread, re: the possibility that
> Pointsman and Mexico narrate the thoughts of the dog, and the equal;
> possibility that the dog narrates.

To which I respond:

Yes, I understand that you have proffered these but it seemed and still
seems to me that you are positing them as mutually exclusive
possibilities (i.e. *alternatives*, either one or the other) rather than
simultaneous and concurrent versions (i.e. *complementary*, both/all at
the same time). The bone I tried to toss into this discussion was that
the indefiniteness and fragmentation of narrative agency is a
deliberately sought-after effect -- i.e. Pynchon *meant* his text to be
indeterminate, this pluralism is inscribed in the process of the
narrative. I think that this is quite a different approach to what
either Doug or yourself had been offering, although I may be wrong. My
point was and still is that approaching the text in an 'it could be this
or it could be that' way is not the same as approaching it in an 'it is
this and it is that and this and that as well' way. I get the impression
that you find the indeterminacy of narrative attribution to be a flaw on
the author's behalf, a regrettable lack at the very least, and that in
trying to fit the Poinstman-as-narrator reading onto the text you were
in fact doing what Pointsman is trying to do: experimenting and playing
out your expectations and yearning for empirical (and historical and
moral) certainty, for a conclusive and individuated narrative, for a one
and only Holy Text. Pynchon certainly inserts behaviourist imagery and
ideology into the novel -- and this yearning is represented in the text
as well, in Pointsman's concern about the "elegant rooms of history"
being shattered by the total ambivalence of Mexico's statistical model
which he fears will usurp his deterministic one (56, your citation) --
but it is an ideology which is subverted and undermined in a continuing
and thoroughgoing way by the concurrence of a range of variant
ideologies/perspectives/readings throughout the text. This was what I
was talking about when I referred to naturalist and Modernist vs.
pluralist readings of the text. To look to one or the other reading, to
isolate this or that sequence or manifestation of theme, is to miss the
whole picture: "...*everything is connected*..." (703)

We seek certitude and resolution through all our structures of society
and culture: we *want* history/morality/life to have meaning, logic,
cause and effect, right and wrong. We *want* the baby to be smiling --
and maybe it is but maybe it isn't as well and this state of unknowing
is the state Pynchon depicts and the one that we have to live our lives
in.

rj, chasing its tail