re P's intentions

[Otto Sell]

"It's such a fine white line, I almost hate to see it go."
(Jackson Browne)

I don't care for Mr. Pynchon's intentions 'cause I don't want to fall into
the 'intentional fallacy'. I look for what he has written.
Tarot is just a metaphysical system based on
binary oppositions like the I Ching, Astrology and other esoterical stuff
that was en vogue (and I think it still is) in the time the novel was
written and used for the novel because they can be compared structurally.
Isn't this called *homologous*?
But it's not restricted on esoterical stuff, all logocentric constructions
bear these resemblances due to the fact that they are built upon a system of
hierarchical binary oppositions.

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: Can't Wait <yayforgod at yahoo.com>
To: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 7:36 PM
Subject: Re: re P's intentions


>
> 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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