Satire (was: Prosthetic Paradise)

[Derek C. Maus]

On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> My point was not throw out satire, I have been talking about
> Pynchon's satire here for a year. My comments were replies
> to an ongoing thread.

Yes, I know. This was actually the source of my confusion with the
sentence "As to Satire, throw it out." It seems (probably not just to me)
as a rather direct call to...well, throw out satire.

> Throw out satire if the only thing that prevents us from discussing GR
> is the term satire. 

And my point was that if this is what prevents us from discussing GR then
maybe we shouldn't be discussing GR (or maybe we should broaden our
definition of satire as Weisenburger does in the book I mentioned...)

> BTW Kharpertian disagreement with Mendleson is on pg 21-23, but my point
> was not that Mendleson is right and Weisenburger is wrong, or Eddins is
> correct, but so and so is wrong, NO this is what one often reads in the
> battle of the books-- "Mendleson's genre, while productive is,
> nevertheless insufficient," And we read this all the time, his approach
> is OK, but my approach is better, his contains, a fatal fallacy or an
> absurdity and so on. 

Couldn't agree with you more. But I also have to say that I agree with
Kharpertian. It IS insufficient...as is Menippean satire. GR is GR. It
participates in a number of literary conventions, but it (like all books)
*is not* any one of them. You seem to have been making this point all
along, so I certainly want to give you credit for this, if it is indeed
what you intend. 

> This battle is often about lit-crit pedantics and I think it usually
> diverts out attention form the text we have in common, in this case GR. 
> I don't think that is what you have in mind here, so lets
> discuss the book--GR.

No, it's not what I have in mind at all. And let me clarify my pronoun
reference in my prior e-mail...I wasn't accusing *you* of being lit-crit
pedantic...just demonstrating one potential (and valid, actually) literary
theoretical manner in which satire and encyclopedic narrative can coexist
peacefully (since genre and mode are technically independent of each
other). I'd rather not split terminology hairs in this way, but for those
who do prefer this approach, I wanted to point out that it works in their
world too. 

I, for one, have rather enjoyed your hosting of this section.

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