GRGR(4)KK and "enthymeme"

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

DudiousMax at aol.com wrote:

> Yo Dudes,
>                You know, I'm not sure if I buy into KK=OW myownself.  But I
> thought I could make a better case than had been made.  One of the things
> I've noticed about how TRP operates is: he'll offer some half-name, or
> allusion early in the narrative -- and later on, maybe at the back of the
> book, he'll offer some other half-name that has no direct connection at
> first.  But like the first name dropped might be The Shadow (which
> presupposes that the reader knows the radio program, and that the original
> actor who played the part was Orson Welles); and then later on, as if to say,
> "yeah, that's the one I mean," he'll have someone whose name is Buster
> Welles, or Orson Ursine, or some such shit.  And that one will be the
> confirmer.  And that is one of the many types of "code" he uses.  But he
> expects us to know that the first "Shadow" was Orson Welles, like you have to
> carry the tune of Cherokee in your head to dig what Bird is doing to it.
> Aristotle called that the "enthymeme."  TRP is great at using the enthymeme,
> to let us figure stuff out that he just doesn't want to say outright.  "Shave
> and a haircut."  kind of stuff.  Except it seems to me it is almost always
> having to do with something political.
>

Tough to do in GR, but easy enough in say "TSI." Every name, every place,
allusion etc. can be decoded. And I think the easiest way to get a handle on
TRP's Baedeker tricks and such is to decode the SL stories. Doing so is fun and
since Pynchon, like Joyce, for example, opens from his early works, such decoding
can be a flashlight in the sewers and not simply a YoYo ride on the shuttle.
Terrance

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