Chasing ... Cutting

[Dave Monroe]

... well, let's see ...

Those Shakespearean plays, whether or not they were written by the historical
William Shakespeare (and there was one, and I have no problem with his cactually
having written those plays), are, to the best of my recollection, never
particularly set IN Elizabethan-to-Jacobean England, or in any particularly
contemporary setting, for that matter (setting aside, for the moment, the
contemporary costumes, sets, props, typically used in staging them at the time).
And yet, after the heir-raising ("No puns where none intended"--Samuel Beckett)
adventures of Henry VIII, after the contested ascension of the heirless (albeit not
necessarily bald) Elizabeth I to the throne , and, again, the troubled reign (er
...) of James I , an awful lot of those plays seem to be about problems of
succession, perhaps even the threat of civil war ...

Literary works, cultural productions, in general, are necessarily products of their
time and place, texts of their contexts.  There's perhaps a reason why ostensibly
"WWII" novels like Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse-Five or Gravity's Rainbow or whatever
were being written during the Cold War, after the Korean "Police Action," during
the Vietnam "Conflict," or even during the Civil Rights Movement (and take a look
at "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts" as well, @
http://www.rpg.net/quail/libyrinth/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html) ...

Paul Mackin wrote:

> When it comes to signification the possibilites are infinite. But not
> all possibilities are created equal. As in the striking of a string or
> the setting of a column of air to vibrate, the fundamental of the harmonic
> series is heard loudly, the second note (the fundamental an octave
> higher) is more faint. All I was doing the other day was identifying
> the fundamental as the ongoing war as Londoners were experiencing its
> death and destruction  and the first overtone as the more
> abstract (abstract in sense, heh heh) Immortality itself that all are
> subject to. There needs to be this kind of clear cut distinction
> between the symbol and the thing symbolized or else the writing will be a
> mess. You can't have sort of alike things symbolizing each other. Not on
> the first go around anyway. I believed then and still believe  that the
> American destination of the final rocket and Vietnam and also the
> Holocaust could only be more faintly heard overtones farther up in the
> series.
>
> I'm being very schematic and nailing things down too tightly but what the
> heck.
>
>                         P.
>
> On Wed, 30 Aug 2000, Dave Monroe wrote:
>
> > Again, think archaeology, layers, strata, folds.  Subtexts, contexts,
> > intertexts.  Collage, montage, superpositons, palimpsests.  A filmic,
> > cinematic novel, indeed.  With illustrations by Robert Rauschenberg.  One can
> > have their Krisatllnacht AND their Crystal Palace, too.  Very wide bandwith
> > here, but with no small amount of signal bleed from channel to channel.
> > "Several levels," "words on your page only delta-t from the things they stand
> > for," "secrets [...] preserve[d centripetally] against centrifugal History"
> > ... kinda sorta how poetic, literary language (for starters ...) functions,
> > no?  Allusively, not exclusively ...
> >
> > There is much in Gravity's Rainbow that is anachronistic, if one has limits
> > contexts to the presumably immediate, historical ones of the narrative at any
> > given point.  And it DOES rather end during the Vietnam War, Cold War,
> > Postcolonialism, Civil Rights, Gay Liberation, et al.   It certainly was
> > written, published at the height of such tensions, certainly can, perhaps
> > should, be positioned there ...
> >
> > Paul Mackin wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Yessenia Perez wrote:
> > >
> > > > TRP gives the history and
> > > > he, significantly it is through Weissmann, links the history
> > > > of the Herero genocide with the  history after the failure
> > > > of the German revolution, with both world wars and the nazi
> > > > holocaust. But the holocaust is not the focus of this
> > > > linking. It is not the holocaust that is alluded to in the
> > > > opening scene of GR. No, that would fuck up the novel,
> > > > sorry. TRP situates the novel, and jbor has been right on on
> > > > this, and see Charles Berger's essay "Merrill and Pynchon
> > > > Our Apocalyptic Scribes", "just BEFORE the beginning of the
> > > > atomic age proper." The fall of the crystal palace is not an
> > > > allusion to the start of the holocaust but to the end of the
> > > > second industrial revolution.
> > >
> > > I can see that you are taking the commonsense view that the novel
> > > is situated at--and starts at--the end of WWII at the beginning of atomic
> > > age--not, say, in 1938 when the Jewish persecution was getting underway,
> > > and not at the height of the Vietnam War, and of course I agree. But
> > > are you leading up to some additional nonliteral truth here as
> > > well? Curious.
> > >
> > >                         P.
> >