Tolerance and Allegory missing word

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

In the archives are 5 posts that define these terms, under
"msat" I think. If we treat each novel as the unique works
that they undoutably are, no "science" of them is possible.
I am attempting not to reduce the art, but to discuss it in
a meaningful way. I think Paul knows what I am talking about
here, if not I assume he will ask. One year ago I joined
this list, one of my first posts, asked that folks define
postmodernism and use it consistently.  When I use the term
postmodern, I often use it as toynbee did in 1875, to
describe an historical cycle, followed by the master
narrative of history (Lyotard) and the inability of such
narratives to think historically (Jameson), and its later
adjustments to the conventions of historical discourse
wherein postmodernism does its slippery thing of
problamatizing the notion of historical knowledge.   I also
use the term as it used in philosophy, dating to Heidegger
and Nietzche and the "death of metaphysics," a philosophical
position that has ancient roots in the Sophists. I also
complain about the tactics, I attribute to Derrida
principally, of deconstructing great texts with the banal
tactic he is now infamous for and refused to respond to, of
cutting off a text--Plato is a good example---destroying its
meaning and in the process, upsetting the ethics of
philosophical hermeneutics. I use the term as it is used in
literary criticism by both McHale and wood. I don't want to
get into putting TRP in a box. I know that using these terms
alienates certain members here, and so I try to avoid them,
I have attempted to argue for one year, that a close read of
TRP's texts as a traditional American writer--note I, as
many do, recognize that postmodern literature in America
needs to be considered in light of American literary history
and its unique developments. I use these two
terms--Menippean Satire and Encyclopedea--with full
knowledge of their limitations, but it is not my intention
to use them to hide behind, to sound smart, to avoid direct
discussion of specific passages or texts, to alienate
anyone, to label, to reduce. I am attempting to have
meaningful discourse, something I sometimes doubt is
possible here, but I nonetheless keep attempting. 

Terrance
David Morris wrote:
> 
> >From: "Terrance F. Flaherty"
> >
> >
> >Failure to recognize that Pynchon's  [NOVELS]  are menippean
> >mostly,
> > > and need to be viewed in light of the ironic treatment of
> > > the  encyclopedia of texts he mingles into his stories with
> > > frightening skill, is akin to failing to understand Eliot's
> > > ironic voices and his foundations in western philosophy.
> >
> >S/B Pynchon's novels are menippean satire, as has been
> >discussed here.
> >
> 
> This categorezation is akin to calling Pynchon's novels "Post Modern."  So
> pre-laden.  So indistinct.  Such a downer.
> 
> Drop the labels and talk specifics.  OK, the text is all-inclusive.  Does
> that relegate it to the banality of the encyclopedia, however satyric?
> Which of the two do we call predominate?  Satyre?  Then "encyclopedic" is
> only limiting, mundane, pedestrian.  This part is only sport, along with the
> rest of the sport! This characterization only serves to lower the text to
> the pedestrian, releive it of the numinous.
> 
> David Morris
> 
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