Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

[Otto Sell]

----- Original Message -----
From: Lorentzen / Nicklaus <lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de>
To: <o.sell at telda.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 2:03 PM
Subject: Re: Osmosis & P's Gnostic Cosmoses

otto schrieb:

> That Pynchon's literature is postmodern and should be looked at with the
> postmodern toolbox. It's as simple as that.

  in these two sentences there are, according to my ever so humble opinion,
at
  least four mistakes. reminds me of that chick who once told me it's not
  necessary to figure out what's actually happening in gr, since we all know
  that this is a "postmodern novel" where content as such is not important
...
  don't get started! you care about the content, i know. but i really cannot
see
  what's - beyond the act of naming - the use in making an ontological
statement
  on the nature of pynchon's literature (- "pynchon's literature is
  postmodern"). i mean, both, frank o'hara (- like him a lot) and umberto
eco,
  have been called "postmodern", but there is, imo, not one little thing
they
  have in common. to put it a little simple: pynchon's literature is
pynchon's
  literature. "postmodernism" is a world-wide intellectual fashion whose
  originality and fruitfulness can and should be questioned. & whatever
  pynchon's literature, in terms of ontology, might be, i, hereby, allow you
to
  use  a n y  tool while having fun with it ... it's as funny as that.

I meant it is a recognized toolbox at universities for a special kind of
literature (don't know O'Hara, but Eco is definitely a member of the club),
The Crying of Lot 49 is used as an introductory text, not only to Pynchon
but to Rushdie and others as well. The Postmodern debate will and shall go
on. By the way I know some Pynchon-specialists who claim exactly that the
content is of lesser interest then the form, calling much of it merely
'anecdotes' - I don't agree with this. The great thing about TRP is the
'golden mean' between form and content, that content is expressed by ways of
a poststructuralist form while at the same time the terms and techniques of
postmodernism and deconstruction are hidden in the content of the text, in
the dialogues, descriptions, seances, dreams and so on.

> "Pluralism is the key term of Postmodernism" (Wolfgang Welsch, "Unsere
> postmoderne Moderne," Weinheim 1991, Introduction, p. XV, eigene
> Übersetzung)

  welsch' title would be a good thing to start with: our postmodern
modernity.
  the structure of the modern society - which implements itself beyond a
point
  of no return between 1750 and 1850 - is basically one of functional
  differentiation. the great functional systems like economy, science,
politics
  or art (- think of goethe's notion of "world-literature") are historical
  mega-machines following their own logic without anything to stop them.
this
  hasn't changed with the violent history of the 20th century, and this also
  hasn't changed with the upcoming of 'poststructuralist' philosophy. it's
  just that the social "poly-contexturality" (gotthart günther) that came
along
  with functional differentiation needed some time to manifest itself on the
  level of semantics. but blake's "urizen" is still the archon of our
  'postmodern' modernity. as a synonym for "pluralist semantics" i might
accept
  the term "pomo", but there is definitely no such thing as "postmodernity"
in
  the sense of a "postmodern society". if you really need an adjective with
  "post-", you may call the present age "post-fordistic late modernity".


The present state of affairs is something special 'cause the definition of
'pomo' is from before 1990 and the world had changed since then. But
Pynchon's project is of course the history of enlightenment (apart from any
ontological terms), which makes him so special in my opinion.

>
> > What are all these Jewish characters doing in V.?
> >
>
> Why is the major character of "Ulysses" an Irish Jew?

  perhaps because the jewish experience of being a stranger to society
becomes
  in modern times virtually the experience of everyone.

Good idea!

>  Why is German postwar culture so poor
> (and American so great and important)? All those Jews have gone or have
been
> murdered - the Jewish impetus is missing.

  well, first thing i'd like to say is that i feel a little uneasy with
  your implicit instrumentalization of the jewish people. it's not their job
to
  "refresh" gentile cultures, is it?! and then it's not quite true: adorno,
  horkheimer, and bloch did return to germany. & there were or are also
people
  like jacob taubes, alphons silbermann, marcel reich-ranicki or peter
zadek.
  btw, since the wall came tumbling down the number of jewish people living
in
  germany has tripled up to about 90 000. mostly because of migration from
  russia.


Well, first it makes me proud making you feeling uneasy with my diction -
but it's in fact what they did to Europe and according to some astrologers
indeed it has been their job in the past.

> Monotheistic
> religions are necessarily logocentric (there is no exception),

    so this goes for 'decon' too?!

Is deconstruction a monotheistic religion?

> The Jewish nose, an old prejudice used even up to nazi-Germany cartoons.

  in one of his books, i assume it's "portnoy's complaint" or "the
counterlife",
  philip roth describes how the main character travels to israel for the
first
  time. looking around he sees many people with big noses and reports to the
  reader something like "they all looked like having jumped out of
antisemitic
  cartoons ...". once met a guy who had just been to israel and was, & for a
  non-jewish german this is quite understandable, somehow ashamed to tell me
  about his astonishment that there were really so many people with big
noses on
  the streets. he thought it to be  j u s t  a prejudice having to do with
the
  resemblance of noses and genitals. talking about german-jewish relations,
i
  remember now that there is a provoking passage in "operation shylock"
where
  roth writes about the official return of the banished jews to berlin in
the
  year 2000: "our jews are back!" anyone for the page number? malign?


> "The Lord's angel, Gebrail, dictated the Koran to Mohammed the Lord's
> prophet. What a joke if all that holy book were only twenty-three years of
> listening to the desert. A desert which has no voice. If the Koran were
> nothing, then Islam was nothing. Then Allah was a story, and his paradise
> wishful thinking."
> (chapter three, p. 83)

> Would you say that Pynchon is writing anti-Islamic here and thus just
being
> more clever then Rushdie in leading a reclusive life?

  good question i asked myself too while reading the passage.

> No, in being
> postmodern [- i'd say: "being an anarchist", kfl] he steps on any feet.

  remains the question if trp would write this "islam was nothing" stuff
  the same way today.

>Declared Marxists have their trouble with
> his texts, with Postmodernism in general, too, like the Mystics and the
> Modernists.

  oh well, i consider myself to be something like a "post-marxist modernist
  mystic", but i don't have more trouble with pynchon's texts than you
should.

kai (- having, as far as i know, neither jewish nor irish roots)

Who the cap fit let them wear it!

Otto
(personally I tend to Rastafarianism)