V.V. (6) Pynchon's research

[Dave Monroe]

Ahoy-ahoy.  "Pynchon ... would have been very young to have acquired all
that arcane and specialized knowledge."  First off, seems to me that
there might well be a few young 'uns here, even, who have acquired some
not inconsiderable "arcane and specialized" knowledge themselves, so ...

But given that Pynchon by his own admission "found most of the material
[he] should have researched for V. long after [he'd] written the book,"
(see that letter to Thomas F. Hirsch included as an appendix to David
Seed's The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon [Iowa City: U of Iowa
P, 1988], pp. 240-43) that his research on the Herero, for example, even
after the writing of V., consisted of a scattering of heterogeneous
materials, from memoirs to monographs to official histories, one might
note that one needn't research exhaustively what one writes of, esp.
when one is writing fiction, even if one is Thomas Rugggles Pynchon,
Jr.  One wings it, uses what's at hand, breathes in what's in the air
...

I recall Keith posting a link to one of many interviews in which William
Gibson has made similar points about his own modus operandi.  Here 'tis:

http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue146/interview.html

But it wouldn't have taken much to have known of, say, that Vogelinian
critique of gnosticism ca. the turn of the sixties, a critique which
resonates at any rate with general misgivings of the time in re:
science, modernity, the Enlightenment, et al. (cf. those soi dissant
Existentialistes, non?  Or even--and now here's going out on a [severed]
limb--that of dissident surrealist Georges Bataille).  I recall kai
making a point of its nigh-unto-sterotypicality, even ...

Nor would it have been much of a stretch to have been familiar with
those Baudelairean figures of the flaneur.   Again, note "the Arcade" on
p. 1 of V., Profane as dandy ("black levis, sueded jacket, sneaker and
big cowboy hat"), as flaneur ("traveling, up and down ... like a
yo-yo"), a cursory familiarity with that Bohemian, Parisian dawn of
modernity would have covered that, and, given Pynchon's obvious passage
through the era of High Beatnikism (e.g., the nfluence of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road on TRP's The Crying of Lot 49), which inherited, valorized,
further romanticised, and widely transmitted such figures, well ...

Or that figure of the femme fatale, the artificial (in the sense of
"made-up" and then some) woman, the feminine automaton, esp. as
emblematic of modernity and, esp, the sinister side thereof, see Thea
von Harbou's and/or Fritz Lang's Metropolis, for starters, maybe even
E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman" (not to mention Roert Graves' The White
Goddess), but also, say, yr average film noir, or even yr Louise Brooks
in Pandora's Box (based on a Frank Wedekind play).  Again, whatever's in
the air, and Pynchon seemed to have been breathing deeply at just about,
of just about, any age.  And it is interesting, productive, revelatory,
even, to determine just what the composition of said atmosphere might
have been ...

AEF = American Expeditionary Force, among, apparently, other things.
And one certainly need not "rally behind" one with whom one deeply
disagrees no matter who makes whatever ceremonial and politic (in the
old skool sense, i.e., asskissing, buttsaving) statements, esp. when the
legitimacy of the "behind" behind which one is allegedly to rally is far
from having been, ever being, determined.   Called keeping yr critical
edge there, sport.  And speaking of which, I see there's been some talk
about deconstruction here ...  but I'm trying to hunt down recordings of
Pierre Barrouh/Jean-Paul Keller/Francis Lai's "Plus Fort Que Nous"
beyond the one on the Une homme et une femme soundtrack and the Astrud
Gilberto one (on September 17th, 1969).  I'm convinced I have one around
the house somehwere, but where, by whom?  Will be back ...