Tolerance and Allegory

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:
> 
> > "It is a problem for allegory, that while going about its
> > own business, it draws attention to itself....Why does
> > anyone tolerate it?"
> >
> > James Wood, 'The Broken Estate' "Thomas Pynchon and the
> > Problem of Allegory" (1999).
> >
> > Wood's chapter on Pynchon is the least flattering I have
> > read on M&D.
> 
> What's it say in a few well chosen words? Does it object to the talking
> dog and clock? I've read a few glowing reviews of the Wood book but
> nobody says much about the Pynchon chapter. I ordered the book--should
> have just walked down the street to Borders--so'll have to wait.
> 
> I take it from the subtitle that fiction is a substitute for religion.
> Therefore it is magical in itself. Therefore explicit magic like talking
> animals is carrying coal to Newcastle. I don't know what I'm talking about
> of course so please advise.
> 
>                 P.

Didn't we have this discussion in Reverse, only it was
Bloom's Shakespeare, you had it, I was reading it in dribs
and drabs. I'll quote a bit from the Pynchon chapter, when
you have the book, we can discuss it and the other chapters
if you like. 

intro:  "The Limits of Not Quite"
"I believe that distinctions between literary belief and
religion belief are important...I am attracted to writers
who struggle with those distinctions....[mid 19th cent.]
those distinctions became much harder to maintain, and we
have lived in the shadow of their blurring ever since. This
was when the old estate broke."

History of old estate and its development

"There is something about narrative that puts the world in
doubt...it makes belief more difficult. A story is a formal
filibuster; it slows down belief until belief falls asleep
and begins to dream its opposite, its negative....Truth
slipped away. And the novel...having founded the religion of
itself, relaxed too gently into aestheticism." 

Great writers--Melville, Flaubert, Woolf, Joyce, move
between the religious impulse and the novelistic,
distinguish and draw on both.   

"Thomas Pynchon and the Problem of Allegory"

Allegory should not be tolerated, unless it overcomes itself
and acts like fiction as it does in Kafka, Mann, Dickens or
elaborates some complex truth--Dante, Kafka, or when "it
explodes itself in the hunt for allegorical truth
(Melville)" 

Obviously Wood is not talking about all of the texts of the
above, for example, he seems to be talking about MD for
Melville--his exploding allegorical hunt. His chapter on
Melville, takes up Melville's "desire for God" and god and
metaphor in MD.

Pynchon is the inheritor of Melville's broken estate. His
novels behave like allegories that refuse to allegorize,
allegory and the confusion of allegory, are what drive
Pynchon's books and his explicit politics. And right, he
doesn't like the talking inanimates, Pynchon's humor, prose,
irony, characters, digressions, evasive incoherence. He
says, Pynchon  uses allegory to hide the truth, and in so
doing, turns allegory into a fetish of itself. He divides
Pynchon's readers--made by the author--as those that think
him a great occultist, and those that think him a visited
hoaxer. Pynchon's novels only call attention to their own
signification, "which hang without reference, pointing like
a severed arm to nowhere in particular." 

It's a very typical negative reading of Pynchon, first one
I've read on M&D. 

TF