Gottfried & Blicero, Nietzsche & Pynchon

[Can't Wait]

It was not my intention, professor, to disperse myself--it was merely
an act of carelessness.  But hell, now that yall know that beneath my
rugged macho (sinful) appearance of a fuck-all godless nihilist (when
I learned (happy, professor?) on this list that Pynchon had some sort
of Believing going on I wanted to vomit in the wildest way, though it
was just an act) I'm actually a sweetlovin goodly man (happy,
Paul?)who can't wait to die and be with my God (and yours whether you
like it or not) in heaven for ever and ever then I may as well just
stick with it.  How easy it is to overcome nihilism!  Just shed it! 
Just SHED that skin and float to the sky!

And I sincerely enjoy being sic-ed.  It's something that always makes
me laugh: the sic-er is like '...and check this out, this moron (who
I am devouring, annihilating with subtle yet obvious brilliance) is
such a weasle of the intellect that he SPELLS WORDS WRONG...!' or
like '...and no way, uh-uh, don't go thinkin I would be such a loser
as to go messin up words like "hear" with "here", for I am an
immaculate intellect...!'

The professor:

'But I do think it tends to weaken a reading to depend  on positing
something (inetntion) [SSSSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCC] which
(a) one can't ascertain, at least without the cooperation of (b)
someone (the author) who necessarily has their own interests in
presenting (or not presenting) their version of the story which (c)
may or may not be accurate in the first place and (d) can't
necessarily be considered the final word on the subject anyway.'

Yes, you don't have to be a particularly exceptional (which I am) or
self-conscious (which I'm not) writer for it to be blindingly obvious
that there is a magnificently huge (nearly the size of God, but not
quite) gap between not only what we intend to write and what we write
but what we intend to be intending and what we actually intend. 
Intentionality is a wonderful concept that perishes just like every
other philosophical concept into the nighttime quagmire of
wordlessness.  Hereof no one can speak.

Have you never had the impression that there is a great deal of luck
happening in genius?  That perhaps genius is precisely that art that,
while causing even the most trenchant minds endless fascination and
deep linguistic probing, is produced without nearly equal amounts of,
as it were, directive energy?  Perhaps the best way to read something
like the Rainbow is not by mapping the intellect that is inherent to
it, not by mapping the web of cognition, but by dipping into the
stream that is rushing forth?  Not to think the Rainbow, but to feel
it?  Perhaps Pynchon is....carefully careless...?

m



--- Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu> wrote:
> ... seem to recall "sic-ing" someone "else," actually.  So can't
> wait =
> MichaelB = well, I just can't wait to find out, is all ...
> "dispersion,"
> indeed ... actually, given the crab-claws (and, speaking of which,
> dispersion, crab-claws, note V677/B789, "Broderick and Nalline's
> shadow-child, their unconfessed, their moster son, who was born
> with
> hydraulic clamps for hands that know only how to reach and grab")
> with
> which I type, I'm perfectly forgiving of typos.  However, I take
> responsibility only for my own, and, if I'm gonna cite someone, I'm
> gonna
> try to cite 'em as I see 'em, is all, so, no offense intended, jus'
> bein'
> responsible about things ...
> 
> "Impossibility" of "any" knowledge of authorial intention?  Well,
> when it
> comes to Pynchon ... but I do believe I questioned "your" (under yr
> MichaelB guise), or, for that matter, anybody posting here's
> possible
> knowledge of Pynchon's "intentions."  That he (for starters) had
> "intentions" in writing Gravity's Rainbow (for starters), I have no
> doubt.  That we can discern, or, at any rate, approximate them, I
> am
> rather more skeptical of.  That anyone here has actually managed to
> do as
> much, well ....  That Pynchon'll ever let any of us in on whatever
> his
> "intentions" were, well, who knows, but, at that point, then we can
> start
> arguing with him as well.  In the meantime, we do have th' texts,
> which
> at least seem, esp. by virtue of their idiosyncracy, their
> complexity, to
> indeed have been written with some care (and you're reading the
> "joy" in
> there), and we have some hint of their contexts, so ...
> 
> Whether or not
> 
> can't wait wrote:
> 
> > Good God, I've been sic-ed by herr professor Monroe.  Always you
> know
> > a spanking is ensuing when you get sic-ed.  As a preface to the
> > sic(en)-ing, he said:
> >
> > 'Not much of anything "careless" about "Pynchon the writer,"
> which is
> > why one doubts that he'd be "tossing about" such, er, "events,"
> much
> > less "joyfully" ...'
> >
> > I wonder how Dave knows this, in light of the impossibility of
> any
> > knowledge of what he recently termed 'authorial intention'.  How
> is
> > it that what you state above....is the case?
> 






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