Theatre/theater?

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Thomas Colin wrote:
> 
> On the 7 theatres:
> No, I'm not sure these are the only 7 occurrences. I could have missed a
> few. So, Let's all hunt down them damn theeeaders, boy!

I'm really interested in GR.326. "Perhaps it's all
theater..."

If this is the only time in GR where Pynchon uses "theater"
I think you are correct, it's significant. Given all the
examples you give below--all use the word "theatre"--it
makes sense to try to figure out why. 

You also noted that Enzian says, "Perhaps it's all
theater..."

This is seems very significant too. As I mentioned, the
reliability of narrative is confirmed here, first because it
is Enzian and second because he is making a significant
discover at this moment, personal, historical,
psychological, theological, philosophical. When certain
characters make discoveries, particularly about Them, the
System, the Firm, etc.,  Their Theatre, or what is real and
not reel or fake, and when characters have visions
(hallucinatory revelations), what they say or think, their
narrative is reliable.

   





> More seriously: I was aking about this particular theatre/theater thing, but
> that doesn't mean I am not taking into account such notions as stage,
> puppet, role-playing, spectacle (as in Debord's "Society of the
> Spectacle,"), word as theatre, but also theatre as world, theatre as
> carnival, theatre as metaphor for the reading-process (extra- and
> intra-textual), plus cinema, as mentioned in the text, as used in the text,
> as "analogon" (Barthes), as simulation, the Text and its always defferred
> performance in the text, quotations, citations, e tutti quanti :
> Theatricality (in a broad, plural sense) in GR is an ENORMOUS subject.
>   Your analysis sounds good to me, altough very different from the
> perspective I'd adopted up to now. That's why I need to readjust a little.
> A-and problem is, I have big difficultie with the Rilke and Cartel
> references, or subtext, or intertext, or pre-text, whatever, because that's
> not what I personally prefer in GR, that's not what I understand best, too,
> and because, in the end, I'm starting to wonder if it is really what matters
> most... and if one could not do without it altogether. That is, not ignore
> it. No misunderstanding here. But perhaps insist a little more on the
> narrative economy and the BIG BIG stylistic aspect, which is really what I
> love in GR. Ah of course style and voices are mirrored and literalized in
> themes... you can't take one without the other... I know.
>   Sorry for this muddle of a post. I'll try to be clearer when I have a
> little spare time (should be OK this week-end).
>   Best.
> Toma
> Keep (insert adj.) but (insert vb.). Now THIS is consensual :)
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com