P's silence & intentions

[Doug Millison]

"Authorial intentions" is a hot-button term, certainly on the P-list 
if not elsewhere. Some P-listers doubt we can ever know anything 
certain about Pynchon's intentions, and wouldn't believe Pynchon if 
he explained his intentions in detail, or would disregard same in 
favor of their own readings; that's fine, no problemo.  I also 
understand that some readers believe that the process of artistic 
creation lies in the domain of unconscious actitivity that is beyond 
the artist's control, and I agree with that as far as it goes. 
Through revision and editing, the artist (or, in P's case, his 
editors, too) does exert some conscious control on the finished work, 
however. Most art, after all, results from a combination of 
inspiration and the hard work of drafting, revising, editing; 
extremely rare are works that flow unedited from the pen.  The idea 
that you can divorce a work of art entirely from the artist is absurd 
(for the simple reason that no artist = no work of art; I won't 
respond to attacks on this statment because I've been on that P-list 
merry-go-round before); although I certainly agree that you can 
choose to ignore the artist and focus on the work instead, and that 
this choice can lead to meaningful, significant criticism.

Mark Wright AIA notes "Pynchon's silence about himself and his work." 
I don't agree that P's been silent; he may have said and written less 
about himself and his work than other writers have done, but what he 
has done along these lines is not nothing.  He directly addresses 
himself and his work, in some detail, in his introduction to _Slow 
Learner_; I understand that some scholars believe this may be an 
elaborate exercise in deception on Pynchon's part, but I tend to 
disagree with that evaluation. In his essays, book reviews, and 
introductions for other novels, he reveals much about his interests, 
and he often comments therein on issues that we find more fully 
developed in his fiction (his comments in the Luddite essay, about 
the factory system, German rocket program, death camps, and Manhattan 
Project, for example; you can also find much that illuminates his 
fiction in his essays on Sloth,  his review of _Love in the Time of 
Cholera_; etc.). Tracing his sources -- many of which have been well 
and clearly established by Pynchon scholars -- tells us a lot about 
what he read, and studying how  this source material has been 
transformed in his fiction can tell us a lot, too.  I understand that 
these sources lie outside the texts of P's fictions, and I understand 
that some hide-bound critics would therefore not permit their 
consideration in the reading and interpretation of a particular text, 
GR for example; that's fine, too, but that's not a rule I choose to 
honor.
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