re P's intentions

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy
I agree. I don't mean to exclude anything, or to keep anyone from
having as much fun as possible while with their reading of P.  I was
responding in the context of an exchange about drugs and what P
*really* meant. He probably "really meant" all sorts of conflicting
things at different times...  The danger is that once you are sure you
have him pinned down, you've ceased to regard the living creature and
begin poking at a toad in a wax tray instead.
Mark

--- 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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