Chasing ... Cutting

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 31 Aug 2000, Stacy Borah wrote:

> IMO, Pynchon's intentions in writing GR don't matter at all UNLESS he wants 
> to tell us why he wrote it.  Then, his reading of the novel becomes the only 
> true reading.  Because those are his words and his thoughts and his 
> meanings, any other reading would be false and only true to the reader 
> making it.  Therefore, any discussion on Pynchon's intentions will only 
> muddle any serious discussion of his great novel. 

The nature of text and meaning is a theological question which St. Thomas
Aquinas (13th C.) might have handled as follows: Textual potency is
that attribute which distinguished the textual animal from the brute
animal. Text is given Actuality (Text brought into Being) when the
textual animal inscribes/types/speaks/imagines/hears or visualizes words
of his/her or another's creation and at the same time   
(concommitantly) interprets and gives meaning to these words.

			P. :-)