re P's intentions

[Can't Wait]

But biographizing a work of fiction, intentionalizing it, is mere
hobbying.  Following allusions of the work to their wicked ends has
nothing to do with the artist; and what does it matter What Pynchon
was doing when he wrote about Tarot cards?  Maybe he was cutting
lines of cocaine with the cards, who cares?  I don't see where you
explained how knowing anything about the artist or his intentions
impacts the interpretation of the work in any other way than giving
pleasure to the process of interpretation, as hobbies do.  The artist
and his art reside in different worlds, different galaxies, different
universes.  That you can discover and ride a wormhole from one to the
other is no indication that transgalactic travel has any meaning
other than the fact that it apparently occurred.

m


--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com> wrote:
> I don't see how an interest in Pynchon's biography, what he's said 
> about his work, and a curiosity about his creative process would 
> necesssarily lead to a "a rather pinched and blinkered perception
> of 
> works of art we must assume knows intimately," if that is what Mark
> 
> is suggesting here.   I'd counter that a view of a work of art that
> 
> rigorously excludes the artist and what we know about the artist's 
> creation of the work and what the artist has had to say about the 
> work,  would be similarly impoverished.  Maybe it's a matter of 
> emphasis and balance.  To reduce the discussion of the work to a 
> consideration only of the author's intentions, stated or otherwise,
> 
> or to interpret the work solely in terms of the author's biography
> -- 
> that would be tunnel vision of one sort.  But to exclude the author
> 
> from a consideration of the author's work, that's going too far in 
> the other direction, it seems to me; that would seem not to permit
> a 
> reading of GR that assumes that Pynchon is actually sitting there 
> dealing the Tarot cards as he watches TV and writes these final 
> passages of the novel; that may be true, who knows, although the
> part 
> about  that Takeshi and Ichizo TV show would seem to be fiction --
> I 
> certainly never saw or heard of such a show on TV  in the '60s or 
> early '70s.  Focusing exclusively on Pynchon's text would also seem
> 
> to preclude one particular pleasure that Pynchon's works offer us, 
> too:  tracing out the allusions (historical and artistic) that he
> has 
> so obviously worked into his text -- the kind of thing that Charles
> 
> Hollander does in his articles, for example -- and using them to 
> interpret the text.  Why some critics would deny that approach (as
> it 
> has been denied, in very ugly and abusive language at times on 
> Pynchon-L), while at the same time launching into interpretations
> of 
> Pynchon's work that move ever farther away from Pynchon's text and 
> deeper into discussions of theory and philosophy that have little
> if 
> any direct connection to Pynchon's writing -- that's always struck
> me 
> as a bit odd; although, as I have said more than once on the
> P-list, 
> excluding the author in that manner can produce some significant
> and 
> meaningful criticism, quite a bit of which I've read and enjoyed.
> -- 
> 
> d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n 
<http://www.online-journalist.com>


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