re P's intentions

[Doug Millison]

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.
-- 

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