Tolerance and Allegory

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

"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. If I were to respond to it, I would turn first
to Hollander's work on Pynchon's politics, satire,
characters, and cryptology, second to  McHale's Tropological
Worlds, third to Melville (Pynchon inherits Melville's
"Broken Estate" according to Wood) and last to the common
texts both Wood and McHale discuss or mention in their
studies of tolerance and allegory, but read quite
differently. 

TF