SPHERE to Eternity

[Doug Millison]

rj,
Can we agree that Pynchon is larger, more complex, and more mysterious,
than our respective insights and assumptions let us apprehend. A library of
criticism still hasn't gotten to the bottom of what his writing's about. I
do believe that Pynchon plays many, many games with his text. He works his
manuscripts over for years, decades even. He writes in layers and invites
us to dig deep to understand what he might be saying. He's a literary and
intellectual elitist par excellence -- his references and allusion and
command over his ideas and prose manifest this undeniably; sure, an average
reader can get by with a reasonable knowledge of pop culture and the
highlights of the Western literary canon, but it's also true that experts
and specialists find their researches and expertise rewarded again and
again in Pynchon studies. His allusions draw us to historical and political
situations with overtones that often harmonize surprisingly with the
surface text, even when they are only echoes in the distance, or
counterpoint, and sometimes those allusions pull us away from the novel
entirely; admittedly it can be difficult to draw the line between what
Pynchon intends in his choice of character name or other allusions, but
tracing out where they lead, well the proof is in the pudding so to speak.
You sound so certain about what Pynchon *can't be doing* so I pose a simple
question:  how can you be so certain? Who set you up as the expert, the
arbiter of what's acceptable or not in the way of interpreting Pynchon's
writing?  And, I submit:  Pynchon is smarter even than you. His text sends
you scurrying for the cover of your own received notions and hidebound
interpretation schemes, and suggestions that there might be more going on
than you can see in them produces these immediate, verbose diatribes.
Hollander offers his readings for our delight. I've read all of his
articles, and I've yet to see him seek to invalidate anybody else's opinion
or reading -- he simply offers another way to have fun with the text, see
where it leads, and, more often than not (as do Dugdale, David Thoreen, and
others who pay close attention to Pynchon's allusions), he comes up with
surprising, interesting results (and you certainly don't see him on
Pynchon-L talking trash about the way other critics read Pynchon,
specifically I haven't seen him on Pynchon-L trashing your particular
approach to reading Pynchon, but I have seen you, again and again, ridicule
and insult his approach). So what if his conclusions don't match your
preconceptions? Live and let live.  Personally, I don't buy your assertion
of some special significance in the fact that  Slothrop's "apogee" (or was
it Brenschluss?) falls precisely at the midpoint of this particular edition
of the novel -- your interpretation by pagination falls apart when you see
other authorized versions of GR (the Bantam paperback, the new Penguin
edition, etc.) that have different pagination because of differing page
sizes and fonts. But if you think Pynchon has calculated precisely where a
certain bit of dialogue or action is going to fall in the overall layout of
the book, more power to you. Opinions are like assholes, my old daddy says,
everybody's got one.  Loosen up, dude. It's Pynchon's world and we're all
just playing in it.

d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n
http://www.millison.com
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