Tolerance and Allegory

[Paul Mackin]

Thanks, Terrance, looks like we have something to talk about (fer
a change, just kidding). Surely all of us (I hope I'm not being too
presumptuous, but know I am) have had reservations about some of the
things our Mr. P does from time to time. Perhaps, if only, we might now
have some kind of a taking off point to thrash things out.

		P.

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:

> 
> 
> 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
>