Chasing ... Cutting

[jbor]

----------
monroe

> I tend to think that the novel is playing on all sorts of very real, very
> reasonable, very likely associations in re: Blicero, Pokler, von Braun,
Dornberger,
> and so forth.

Yes, Pudding, Mexico, P.M.S. Blackett, Melvin Purvis, too.

> I think it not unreasonable to consider Gravity's Rainbow in light of
> Dr. Strangelove, or ..., even.

Or even the actual films and film directors referred to in the text: King
Kong, Der Mabuse, other German expressionist films, Lang, Bergman ...

> Again, the ironies involved in that von Braun
> epigraph alone ...

Indeed. It is ironic because the epigraph seems to affirm a way we might
want to read the novel, and life. So we (some, anyway) find ourselves
continually lurching after evidence to condemn the man in spite of this
seemingly simple statement of faith. Reminds me a little of Charles Darwin,
who was a regular churchgoer I'm told.

snip
> ... but an "attempt" to "foreclose" a "reading," "vigorous" or otherwise?
Heyyy,
> that's MY trick, pal

Der.

>  more like anxious for you to get to yr presumed
> Point, is all.  Me, I'm just beginning to work this out on screen, is all, but
you
> seem to have come Prepared.

All sorts of negative insinuations in this. Can't quite understand why.

> 'Cept all we get are hints, Hints, maybe, even, and the
> only way I can seem to elicit any more is by asking-to-provoking, is all.

(Love the presumption of consensus in that "we".) I'd be happy to try to
answer a specific question, if you have one.

Your snide remarks about "academics proper (and/or improper, even?  Far more
likely ...)" are disingenuous to say the least. There are obviously a number
of academics who do contribute to the discussion, some from fields other
than literary studies. They perhaps don't deport themselves with the
effusiveness and bibliographical exhibitionism you'd like, but they
generally have something quite cogent to offer. In the brief time you have
been around there have been contributions from literary critics such as
Vaska Tumir, Inger H. Halsgaard and Heikki Raudaskoski, all of whom have
articles in the current issue of *Pynchon Notes*:

http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/contents.html

But why is this so important to you? There are just as many regular
contributors who are not academics who offer worthwhile and insightful
commentary on the texts without exhibiting symptoms of the sort of
compensation anxiety you appear to be suffering from. Viz:

> I can't
> imagine anyone, tenured, seeking tenure, or one day hoping to be seeking
> tenure, much less interested in responsible scholarship or whatever,
> engaging in the not-all-too-elegant nastiness by which we seem to pass much
> of the time here.  I mean, me, I've long since given up, this is my last,
> best hope,

and> >

> But, hey,
> just where are they throwing that Critical Convention this year?  Really
shoulda
> gone when it was in Chicago, but, well, so difficult to break away around the
> holidays ...

and

> (and are Certain
> Someones seriously concerned others here might rip off their precious
insights?
> Don't even bother to roll up yr windows ...)

or even the sort of veiled threat that your fugleman, millison, also
indulges in:

> I've seen
> people flee such online discussions because they're afraid it might get back
> 'round to th' Department ...

As Meg Larson (another academic) commented recently:

> Enjoying the civil discourse--what a change

And it appears to me that it is really only yourself and millison who seem
intent on provoking the discourse to become something other than civil. Why
is that, I ask? So, when you assert that

>  there are differences
> between "difficult" and "abrasive" and "adolescent" and "insulting" and so
forth

I would only suggest that it's time for you to take St Luke's advice:

"Physician, heal thyself."