Elitist Pynchon-ites?

[Terrance]

There was a time, not too long ago, when literary theory was
replete with references to "the informed reader," "the
competent reader," the ideal reader," and so on. All of
these suggest a certain distinction, some would say, a
downright condescension towards, the ordinary reader. The
ordinary reader, as I choose to think of him, is a guy like
me. I have a certain passion for literature, but I devote
only a part of life's brief span to reading-doing so, not as
a professional but for personal satisfaction. The
distinction between me, the ordinary reader, and the
professional reader or critic is a vague and wavering one,
but a distinction nonetheless. Some, especially those that
have been hit hard over the head with the idea, will not be
comfortable even with my referring to myself as an ordinary
reader. Is there some irony in the fact that many that argue
against such distinctions may have abandoned all common
sense to the nonsense, political nonsense mostly, peddled by
the current academic elite? Whenever I hear or read the term
New
Criticism, I am sure that hegemony and T.S. Eliot are sure
to follow. How
did the critic become such a "despot" in the first place?
Well that's a long story, forces unseen, both social and
intellectual, strange and personal, political and
reciprocal, but at some point it became such a given, and
included writers as well as critics, so that no one seemed
too confused when in 1976, Saul Bellow gave his Nobel Prize
lecture and claimed that writers had "developed a marked
contempt for the average reader and the bourgeois mass." But
recently, the critics, for the most part, get most of the
blame. The same folks that paint T.S. Eliot and other New
Critics with Hitler mustaches wouldn't dream of doing the
same to Joyce, who of course loaded up his books with
personal and esoteric metaphor and symbol, saying he would
keep the critics busy for a long time, while he cooperated
with his friends in writing explanations and explications of
the extra-ordinary and complicated schemas that had guided
his writing of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Of course,
Joyce's way of writing was innovative, he extended the great
tradition by expansion and incorporation, not, as each
generation of critics can't seem to help themselves from
saying about each new generation's innovations, killing the
old and creating the new out of nothingness. The obscurity
of Joyce was part of his innovation, for some of his
imitators it may have become their essence, a one trick
pony. They say time loves a hero, but only time will tell.
Some guy with little feet said that. In any event, music is
a useful analogy here. There can be many performances of a
particular piece of music, maybe as many as, well, that's
another can of worms, but if I play Mozart, halting,
mechanical, sentimental, I won't win any prizes, but when
another list member here, obviously a brilliant musician,
technically perfect, plays Mozart, he wins prizes. There
once was a girl named lizas
Should our admiration for the
brilliant musician denigrate my humbler effort? Should my
fingers be broken, my piano smashed and tossed on the fire?
There is some value in my performance isn't there? But
commonsense says there is a difference between what I play
and what our brilliant list member plays. But the brilliant
player cannot play for me, he can't come into my body and
mind and control my awkward incompetence. Likewise, no one
can read for anyone else, but this doesn't make the music
teacher an elitist. The teacher of Shakespeare is not an
elitist by nature of being a teacher, is she? The
professional Pynchon critic is not an elitist by nature of
being a professional critic. There is some pedagogical
pathology, some strange hypocrisy in all this, isn't there?
Now some will say, but the elitist critic claims privilege,
he says, Milton's Lycidas means this and not what you say it
means, but again, common
sense sets limits. We have only one poem to consider, Milton
wrote it, people have been reading it for years, some
interpretations are quite different from others, but no
serious critic would publish an essay that claims that
Milton's Lycidas is about his own brother. One can read
Lycidas and say it is about one's brother, but this doesn't
make it so. It doesn't make that personal reading of Lycidas
worthless or wrong, but ordinary and personal.  The critic
will know the history,
the biography, the allusions, the politics, the technical
and traditional poetics, etc. and his reading will be a
professional, not an ordinary one, his published essays will
not be personal, he will not say GR is about my trip to
France, although he may include his personal, even intimate,
one might say embryonic reading experience in his public
thesis. Some readings of GR are simply better than others,
and there is nothing elitist about it. It's simply common
sense.

I agree with Slothrop in-quotes on music-- the sustained
conflict, the young and old and all the other distinctions
Weisenburger notes in his Companion (Italian vs German, see
pg. 205), but this debate is quite different from other
sustained musical debates in GR, some of these being
Positive, while this debate is negative
irony-German dialectic, centripetal movement, plots against
children. 

They are hounded down to the bottom  Of a bad town amid the
ruins.   Where they learn to fear an angry race  Of fallen
kings their dark companions.  While the memory of their
southern sky Was clouded by a savage winter. Every patron
saint hung on the wall Shared the room with twenty sinners.