SPHERE to Eternity

[rj]

mp
> I really don't want to get in the middle of this trench war, 

> but
> something that has seemed to go unnoticed is that in the essay in
> question Mr. Hollander states that there is not a "one-to-one
> correspondence" from Ornette Coleman to McClintic Sphere leaves room
> for us to assume that the correspondence from Thelonius Sphere Monk to
> McClintic Sphere is not necessarily one-to-one either. 

That's just it, you see. I don't think it does leave this room.

> It seems to me
> that Mr. Hollander does not mean to imply that the connection is
> exclusive.  

The article opens with the following statement: "Thomas Pynchon adorns
McClintic Sphere with a 'hand-carved ivory saxophone,' getting us to
think Sphere is somehow a stand-in for jazz great Ornette Coleman."
Accompanying is a photograph of Mr Coleman with said instrument in hand.
The phrases "getting us to think" and "is somehow a" are the first clues
that this is what Mr Hollander is referring to as Mr P's strategy of
"misdirection". Mr P is "getting us to think" that this overt connection
with Coleman is the correct one, when in fact there is another, more
thoroughgoing connection to be made. The reader has been "misled" (final
sentence) in making the connection with Coleman.

While nowhere is it explicitly stated in the essay that McLintic Sphere
is a "one-to-one" stand in for Theolonius Monk, the concept of
"misdirection" does not denote or allow for multiple possibilities. It
is an 'either/or' construction, isn't it? 

In the essay Mr Hollander writes: "By naming his jazzman McClintic
Sphere, Pynchon signifies he wants us to decode to Thelonious Sphere
Monk in the subtext. If for Gertrude Stein, 'a rose is a rose is a
rose'; for Pynchon, a Sphere is a Sphere." The analogy with Ms Stein's
famous sentence isn't really apt either, as she was playing around with
the multiple possibilities of the word "rose" (arose, her editor's name,
Rose d'Aiguy to whom the children's book *The World is Round* is
dedicated), rather than proposing the singularity of the signifier.
Further, the sentence as it first appears actually reads: "Rose is a
rose is a rose is a rose, is a rose." (*Sacred Emily* 1913, p 187) It
also appears in later works (usually minus the final "is a rose"): *The
World is Round* 1939, and 'Lifting Belly'. In 'An Elucidation',
*Transition* 1 (1927), p. 75, it recurs as: "Suppose, to suppose,
suppose a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." She discusses her varied
use of the phrase in both *Lectures in America* and *Narration*. (So, in
terms of the reference to "wily coyote" and Stein's quote elements Mr
Hollander's "scholarship" are actually quite suspect.)

But what Mr Hollander seems to me to be saying here is that the name
"Sphere" is final and definitive proof of the connection between the
character and the jazz musician. 'Sphere is Sphere'. I read in this
statement, and the essay as a whole, the meaning of "instead of" any
connection with Coleman, Gillespie or Parker, but if you would like to
argue that he means "as well as" then by all means I'd accept that.
However, I don't think what follows in the essay, the link between V.
and the Baroness, stands up at all if we accept McLintic Sphere is in
fact a composite characterisation, or an entirely fictionalised
character. And isn't this the larger subtext of Mr Hollander's article?
To try and pin down the identity of V. once and for all?

> It is my non-rocket-scientist opinion that this set of
> correspondences is, as someone else has posted (I'm sorry I forget who
> or I would give credit where it is due), the result of a Pynchonian
> composite allusion.  

Again, this was a notion I put forward, so the insinuation that I have
been participating in a "war" or campaign against Mr Hollander is just
as off-base as doug's. Credit where credit's due, and to this end I have
said that Mr Hollander has pointed out the connection between McLintic
Sphere and Theolonius Monk in a very thorough and entertaining manner,
and has broken new ground in doing so. However, I do not agree that
therefore McLintic Sphere exclusively signifies Monk, nor do I agree
that V. signifies the Baroness Nica. Perhaps in *one* of her female
guises a case can be made, but the "notable parallels between Nica and
the woman Stencil knows as V." remain scant at best. The human female
characters who "are" V. in *V.* (let alone the non-human manifestations)
differ so radically from one another, there are so many contradictory
traits and histories, that such a narrow superimposition is doomed from
the start. Further, where Mr Hollander details the sympathetic qualities
of the Baroness -- her "rebellious streak", her prototypical feminist
attitudes and behaviours, her role in the French Resistance in WWII --
the entity V. in the novel comes to assume a far more malevolent guise,
particularly as Melanie l'Heuremaudit's patroness and as the Bad Priest
of Valetta. Mr Hollander does not address these contradictions in his
essay.

> We all can gather that it is very likely that
> Pynchon enjoys playing about with anything and everything that goes
> into his books.   Mr. Hollander's revelation of "misdirection" is a
> valuable part of the ever-growing body of Pynchon scholarship.

You haven't defined what, in your terms, this "misdirection" is, so I
can't agree with this. In describing "how and why Pynchon means Sphere
to signify Thelonious Monk and his mistress, the Baroness" Mr Hollander
is reinterpreting the text, trivialising it in fact. Molly Hite: "As the
novel proceeds, V. comes to promise so much that any resolution would
seem ludicrously deficient."(*Ideas of Order*, p 27) In fact, Mr
Hollander, in personifying V. in this way, is offering up a
Stencillisation of his own, the inaccuracy and inappropriateness of
which even Herbert Stencil is forced to admit to himself:

"Truthfully, he didn't know what sex V. might be, nor even what genus
and species. To go along assuming that Victoria the girl tourist and
Veronica the sewer rat were one and the same V. was not at all to bring
up any metempsychosis: only to affirm that his quarry fitted in with The
Big One, the century's master cabal, in the same way Victoria had with
the Vheissu plot and Veronica with the new rat order. If she was a
historical fact then she continued active today and at the moment,
because the ultimate Plot Which Has No Name was as yet unrealized,
though V. might be no more a she than a sailing vessel or a nation."
(227)

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