Life v. Art (was Re: Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[rj]

Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>:

> So here is another plug for the
> library research side of the guy--but Reality was produced. 

I think the watch anecdote might actually support the oral history (as
opposed to book-bound) theory of Pynchon's writing methods. And, I'm not
sure that *GR* is "truly about the seminal event in history we
know and (yes) love as World War II", at least, not in a traditional
history-book sense of battles and offensives and mass slaughter and
alliances and diplomacy. The war backdrop is certainly factually
accurate, but it's not centre-stage.

A couple more points: I think that the Tarot readings in *GR* at 738,
746-9 and elsewhere are actual readings Pynchon did at the time he was
writing. In other words, they have not been contrived authorially in a
literary way, but are deliberately aleatory. He may well have consulted
Waite for the layout style and card interpretations, but he left
narrative development and significance to the fall of the cards. The
drug, magic and mystic stuff seems to fall into the same category. It is
"Kabbalist spokesman Steve Edelman" (753) who "explains" the Sephiroth
after all, not Another Narrator with his head buried in a book. It would
be both paradoxical and unconvincing (and a gross misrepresentation, I
believe) for Pynchon to attempt to emulate subjective phenomena like
drug consciousness, dreams, supernatural apparitions and other
irrational or anti-rational faith structures through a recourse to the
unapologetically rationalist and sceptical (and therefore inimical)
procedure of scholarly research. 


"Terrance F. Flaherty" <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>:

> All those works of fiction, poetry, philosophy, art, music,
> psychology, sciences, history, biography, religion and so on
> through the encyclopedia.

Yes, Pynchon's fiction is encyclopedic. But I don't think this means
that he's an Encyclopedist. The recount of Kekule's discovery of the
benzene ring in *GR*, to take another example, is legendary/anecdotal
rather than encyclopedic; and this type of anti-historical maneuvre is
expanded significantly in *M&D*.

Likewise, it is the very ambivalence of the schlemiel's nature and
plight which draws Pynchon to him as an (anti)-archetype. He is a
personification (and symbol) of indetermination and disorder.

best