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

[Peter Fellows-McCully]

Isn't it also possible that P's conjuration of WWII resounds with us
_because_ he
wasn't there and gains his experience of the actuality of the war in the
same way
as (most of) us have: through films, books, stories, TV etc. Perhaps, the
idea that
there is a close correlation between specifically the war images and the
actual
war might seem untrue to anyone who was there (wherever _there_ was). Anyone
have
real experiences?

PFM
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
> Behalf Of rj
> Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 10:11 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Life v. Art (was Re: Drugs in Pynchon's fiction
>
>
> 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
>