Tolerance and Allegory missing word

[David Morris]

Sorry to be so reactionary.  It was late and I was tired.

I must admit that some of this litcrit "science" of the text bothers me, 
because I see it akin to stuffing the text into a form of our making, not 
allowing it to be itself, as you suggest is the fault with Derrida.  This 
attitude of mine has been expressed before on-list in objecting to attempts 
to dissect the surreal from the "real" events in GR.  On the other hand, the 
context you and others provide in linking Pynchon's text to his 
predecessors, both American and other, I find illuminating.  So I'm not 
consistent.

Sorry again,
Carry on,

David Morris

>From: "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.
>

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