GRGR Pynchon on Pynchon (was Slothrop & Sloth)

[Kevin Won]

Quote:

I'd like to hear more about the genre of essay in which the author, writing
in a non-fiction mode, does not reveal "anything of his personal 'beliefs'
".

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I wonder on what grounds we can ever speak of an author of fiction as ever really stepping out of that mode, particulary such a selectively-spoken one such as Pynchon.  

It seems to me that it is all Text (or a small "t"ext maybe), that we cannot (re)lyably judge between the "facts" and "fictions" of his texts, be them ostensibly in the fiction or non-fiction mode.  This is not to say that an essay in the Times isn't important information, full of great clues and leads, but that differentiating between what Pynchon says when he is writing his fictions and what he "really" means when he writes "non-fiction" cannot help establish the legitimacy of a particular contention (i.e. "Pynchon writes in Non-fiction essay "The truth about my books" that  he means "X" in his novels).  Pynchon is not being more or less truthful in either medium, non/fiction.

By way of example, Joyce was famous for feeding Stuart Gilbert, a biographer and explicator of Joyce's texts, all kinds of tall tales (tongue in cheek) which Gilbert would parrot as the "truth" about _Ulysses_, for example, straight from the horses mouth as it were. 

The point is:  when can we ever be *sure* that Joyce isn't joking, or drunk, or possessed by demons, etc.  Where do we get the presence of the text to reveal itself?  Where is it hiding?  Why is it that  we assume Joyce knows more about what the words are on the pages of _Ulysses_ than anyone else?  

Kevin
Wonk at ohsu.edu