GRGR(10) - Plasticman

[jonathan schultz]

This image of transcendence or omniscience succinctly encapsulates
> Pynchon's literary aspiration, to get "outside the frame". Ultimately,
> this is what he manages to achieve with Slothrop. But Slothrop has no
> access to the cartoon hero Sundial at this point, as he did with
> Plasticman earlier, for the narrative has parenthesised the reference to
> another time and place (and story!) and it serves as an aside to the
> reader no less. Sundial is able to move beyond his fictive domain (and,
> beyond moral stereotypes); this is the very lesson Slothrop and
> Plasticman must come to learn too. Pynchon, like Sundial, is not
> enclosed by the conventional frames of his medium. He is able to reach
> across the "interface", into a world outside the fiction.

In order for Pynchon to exceed, transcend or otherwise bamboozle his
"interface" is to perform a miracle.  No matter how well a passage is
written the book can be closed.  However, like Slothrop, the events that
surround the book allow the author to play with the rules of the medium in
a way that allows momentary questions of context.
If Sundial performs business in fictional space unobserved by the reader,
the very notion of a fictional space is planted by the writer and so leads
the reader to creating a fictional space that is purposely left undefined
albeit contextualized well within the rules of fiction.  This is the main
question that philosophy asks fiction, is the written word an extension of
the spoken word?  Or is the written word a supplement to the spoken word? 
Are the two joined at all except by means of artificial categories?
GR to a reader, like Plas to Slothrop, like Sundial to the artificial
intimate fostered by Pynchon's sidenote, is what it is because of it's
transplantation beyond the zero of recognition.  But, TP understands quite
well the meta-rules of the game he is playing.  Literature cannot, of it's
own creation, transcend itself, but it can instill in it's readers the
inspiration to assume that it has.  Like the bible.  You know...

Jonathan Schultz

Nihil verum.  Omnium licet.

----------
> From: rj <rjackson at mail.usyd.edu.au>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: GRGR(10) - Plasticman
> Date: Friday, September 24, 1999 5:03 PM
> 
> >