thoughts

[DudiousMax at aol.com]

Yo Dudes and Dudeens,
                It is I, Max Dudious, posting after some months because I 
have some new stuff to say.  I was going on with my same old stuff so much 
that I got self-conscious.  Nothing worse than posting with nothing much to 
say.  So here goes some, I hope, new stuff.
                Did you ever get the feeling that some things in some books 
were more important than similar things in other books.  Like all mystery 
writers don't use the same techniques to achieve their ends: Agatha Christy 
uses plot to the extent that you don't remember if you've already read some 
of her books until she gets to the denouement.  Her characters are not very 
well developed.  John le Carre, on the other hand, was acclaimed for his 
psychological acumen and his ability to raise his characters to fully rounded 
personalities, and the solution to many of his stories depended on the 
consistency of one or other of his characters.  So you might say Agatha 
depended on plot, and le Carre on character.  The question one might ask when 
faced with a new writer is, within the mystery story genre, is this author a 
"plot" or "character" dude?  How do we know?  What judgments allow us to 
place a work in this or that category?  What methodological grounds have we 
for establishing primacy?
                Of course our TRP isn't a mystery writer, though the points 
of similarity in his method and mystery writers' method have been discussed 
in the critical literature.  He raises questions.  He wants the reader to 
"work" at the text, to come up with tentative answers to the questions.  He 
sets out clues for us to follow.  Some times the clues are "reader traps," 
but other times they are not.  How do we know which is which?  What method 
have we for establishing primacy?
                Indeed, does he have a "message" or are all of his dialectics 
always so undermining of his apparent assertions that all of his oeuvre 
amounts to a joke on the reader?  This view has its followers.
                IMHO reading Pynchon is like a series of exercises in problem 
solving.  Not the kind you get on standardized tests, "If John has a canoe 
and a six gallon can and a four gallon can, how many trips does it take for 
him to get a gold filling at the dentist."  Reading Pynchon is like solving a 
problem in diagnosis for a physician.  A patient comes in complaining of a 
sore throat.  The doctor looks in and sure enough there's a sore throat.  Is 
it the result of an allergic post nasal drip?  Or an infection?  If 
infection, is it biotic (strep), viral, or fungal (thrush)?  Is it complete 
in itself, or is it the precursor of something worse, like spinal meningitis 
or polio which first present as head colds?  So it is a problem of weighting. 
 As we are reading, do we consider a given passage as light, middle, or heavy 
weight?  How do we arrive at this consideration?  The doc has various tests 
and procedures he can employ.  Do we have any method?  Or is it just "taste" 
or personal opinion.
                One big problem in reading TRP is genre.  If we apply the 
critical methods based on Aristotle's poetics for evaluating a Pynchon novel 
we're gonna get in trouble.  Pynchon likes certain forms: Menippean Satire, 
the Encyclopedia Narrative in particular.  But mixed in with these are 
sections of more or less naturalistic technique (the Jessica/Roger love 
affair, for one), and some protracted jokes (For deMille, young fur henchmen 
can't be rowing. and the Candy Drill).  TRP is often slipping back and forth 
between genres.  But it is still important that we readers know which genres 
they are.  So genre is probably more important in reading Pynchon than it is 
in reading most authors of this past millennium.
                Some brief thoughts about Mrs. Quoad and the crazy candies 
drill.  Does it advance the plot?  Does it develop character?  Is it 
analogous to any of the main themes of the novel at large??  What happens in 
these six and a half  pages?  Well, not much.  Slothrop comes out of the 
hospital (still a bit high?) and he goes to the East End to slip his tail.  
By accident he meets Darlene (a nurse at the hospital) in the street, and she 
takes him to Mrs. Quoad's.  They eat candies.  He winds up in bed with 
Darlene, and he may have been observed by his tail.  That's all that happens. 
 IMHO it could have easily been left out, if you use traditional literary 
methods to evaluate its effect on plot, character, or theme.  Nothing much 
happens beyond, he meets a girlfriend (it's been established that he's a 
ladies man, or has a vivid fantasy life), they eat candy, and they go to bed.
                On the level of the subtext, ay there's the rub, there are 
lots of other things happening.  On p. 116 there are two wine jellies 
mentioned by name just a few lines apart, the French Lafitte Rothschild, and 
the German Berkastler Doktor.  If we haven't seen it yet, it is not just a 
French name, it is a name of the French-Jewish Rothschilds.  Soon after are 
mentioned "a hopeless holocaust" (p118), "poison and debilitating gases" 
(p119), and another mention of King Yrjo, from "The Secret Integration."  As 
Mrs. Quoad's name suggests, the passage is a medley of anattributed 
quotations from texts, literary or musical, known as quod-libets.  By naming 
the self described witch Mrs. Quoad, TRP is allerting us there is more going 
on in the passage than the merely what happens.  There is also this medley in 
the subtext which makes it more than merely The Disgusting English Candy 
Drill.
                At the subtextual level TRP is alerting us to The Holocaust, 
to the murder of Jews by Germans, to poison gases, and to true and false 
allies.  Much of what the book eventually is about it here in this short 
section, in miniature, in the subtext.  It might prompt us to Max's axiom #1; 
SOMETIMES THE SUBTEXT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE TEXT.  I guess this makes me 
what Terrance has dubbed those who believe this axiom, a Subtextualist.  But 
I also believe it is a quesiton of weighting.  It is not always, and in all 
cases, the axiom that applies.  #2; SOMETIMES THE SUBTEXT IS OF EQUAL 
IMPORTANCE AS THE TEXT.   And just to demonstrate my charity, #3; SOMETIMES 
THE TEXT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE SUBTEXT.  Since the main energy of the 
novel shifts back and forth, with the subtext illuminating the text, and vice 
versa, we have to judge each instance on a case by case basis.  There is no 
rule.  We have to follow the ball to discern where the main energy is.
                This is a friendly note to the list.  It doesn't take on the 
weight of a paper to be published.  I will field friendly debate and 
questions.  I will not answer hostile attacks or character assassination.
                 Charles Hollander