Comprising confrontations in _GR_

[Dave Monroe]

Hm ... well, I guess I get a little wordy when I've been up all night, but
... a couple of thoughts since: first off, Gravity's Rainbow in that line of
Vietnam-era works about WWII which, almost by virtue of their very silence
on Vietnam (prolepsis being the word for today, courtesy of Louis
Mackey--that Harold Bloom edited Modern Critical Interpretations of
Gravity's Rainbow or whatever it's called [NY: Chelsea House, 1986, at any
rate ... by the way, Bloom, writing no later than said year, mentions that
Pynchon's then-forthcoming novel might be title The Mason-Dixon Line ...]
sure comes in handy), inevitably address the subject, inevitably posit a
certain absurdity, futility, to the war, whicherevr one that might be, to
war ... GR, Catch-22, Kelly's Heroes, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Dirty Dozen
... interestingly, the only actual Vietnam War movie of the Vietnam War era
that I can think of off hand is The Green Berets, which is decidely NOT in
the aforementioned lineage.

Also, on that Realistic/fantastic affair, "the fantastic" or whatever as
perhaps, perhaps deconstructively the very condition of possibility of "the
realistic," "realist" fiction being, indeed, fiction nonetheless, dependent
on a certain reality effect ((c) Roland Barthes, perhaps Bertold Brecht), an
effect which the fantastic, fantasy, "science" fiction, whatever, might well
be said to employ, deploy with even greater effect, affect, maybe, even,
given that the devices em/deployed do not often have, do not have nearly the
sheer intertextual, cultural strength, intensity that analogous devices in
"realist," "realistic," "naturalist," whatever fiction (again, keeping in
mind that it is fiction, fictional, er, fantastic) might draw on.  Hm, maybe
yet another example of that Presence/absence problem, the alleged "presence"
of the "reality" of "realism" vs. the alleged "absence" of the
"fictionality" of the "fantastic," which is nonetheless, well, whaddaya
know, the general condition of fiction ... cf. Live action/animation in
film--seems to me that it's ALL animation, and "live" action is actually the
easy way out (perhaps even a bit morbidly death denying), yet we devalue the
cartoons ... that repression of the condition of possiblity of the valorized
term thing again ... so, well, anyway, in the case of Pynchon, well-versed
as he is, as his texts are, in so-called "trash" culture, seems to me that
the "tension" betwixt fictional modes/techniques/genres/whatever you
identify isn't necessarily all that tense, just depends on what your own
hang-ups, anxieties are ...


Dave Monroe wrote:

> A couple of notes on this: first,Edward Mendelson, in his essay,
> "Gravity's Encyclopedia" (in his Mindful Pleasures)--which was likely an
> early and strong influence on my own ruminations on Pynchon--sets forth
> not only his idea of a genre of "encyclopedic" works--The Divine Comedy,
> Gargantua and Pantagruel, Don Quixote, Faust, Moby-Dick, Ulysses,
> Gravity's Rainbow, for starters--but, further, claims such works serve
> their "encyclopedic" function for, at, a given time, place (albeit not
> necessarily in that order), generally, at the founding of a nation, or a
> particular order.  Moby-Dick is already the (North) American
> encyclopedic fiction, Mendelson claims; Gravity's Rainbow instead serves
> this function for "a new international culture, created by the
> technologies of instant communication and the economy of world markets"
> ("encyclopedic narratives appear near the beginning of a culture's or a
> nation's sense of its own separate existence," sez Mendelson).   In
> relation to your comments, then, I find it indeed interesting that an
> ineluctably American novel like GR does, indeed, take place almost
> exclusively in Europe, in the Old World (although there would be no
> small precedence for this in the novels of Henry James--might one read
> GR as somewhat of a parody thereof? Though one might question just how
> "ineluctably American" HJ as a writer is, given his own debt to
> Flaubert), all the while dealing with what indeed will prove to be a new
> world order, i.e., that there military industrial complex ((c) Ike).
> Which reminds me, anybody out there notice an almost paraleptic neglect
> of Vietnam in GR?  Given that there are some flash-forwards of sorts,
> given the time during which the book was being written, the time at
> which it was published (ditto TCOL49) ... but I digress.  "Without any
> Orientalist recourse to romanticized realms outside the borders of the
> West," indeed.  Very good ...
>
> ... but I'm not so sure about this supposed "tension," this "tension
> between ... 'realistic' mimeticism ... and romance, fantasy, and science
> fiction."  One might, of course, argue that science fiction might well
> be considered the last bastion of, perhaps the purest form of literary
> "realism," insofar as said "realism" might be taken as, say, the
> judicious use of selected details, detailings, in order to create,
> construct some sense of "reality," of, if not necessarily
> verisimilitude, plausibility, e.g., Robert Heinlein's (?) "the door
> dilated" (Starship Troopers?), a judiciously selected and
> fictional-reality-constructing detail, indeed.  Bam, you're there ...
> but one might also note that there is a "tension" betwixt the two only
> from certain critical or critically-informed standpoints, from certain
> inculcated tastes.  At the science fiction end, Pynchon is writing in
> the wake of the SF "New Wave," Ballard, Ellison, Moorcock, Aldiss,
> Delaney, et al. (a wave that would in turn find itself quite willfully
> in Pynchon's wake), which would already find itself in "tension" with
> "realist," realism-aspiring SF.  Either way, that realistic/fantastic
> binary was (always) already deconstructing itself ... gotta go, but am
> interested in what you might have to say on this ...
>
> hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi wrote:
>
> > In _A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American
> > Literature_, Richard Poirier insists that American
> > writers have, in resistance to social and natural
> > forces, tried to bring about environments of freedom by
> > the power of words. In distinction from their European
> > colleagues, whose works tend to "mirror an environment
> > already accredited by history and society", American
> > writers have tried to "create through language an
> > essentially imaginative environment for the hero." In
> > other words, the romantic line in American literature
> > has strived to overcome all restrictive borders
> > established by dominant social-historical forces.
> > Poirier stresses that it has been possible to carry out
> > these transgressions through style only, "as if only
> > language can create the liberated place."
> >
> > Proponents of the romantic line like Emerson, Melville,
> > and the later James differ from realistic/naturalistic
> > writers like Howells, Dreiser, and Wharton, "who",
> > according to Poirier, "can only reproduce the effect
> > of environment as force." Perhaps more intensely than
> > any other novel, _GR_ comprises both of these lines.
> > The text becomes a field of confrontation between
> > oppressive social-historical forces and characters'
> > thrusts at freedom. In both stylistic and generic terms
> > _GR_ contains an unsettled tension between historically
> > accurate, "realistic" mimeticism so typical of the
> > European novel, and genres as romance, fantasy, and
> > science fiction, which resist the European tendency to
> > mirror history and society.
> >
> > At the same time, however, the novel takes place mostly
> > within the borders of Europe. It sets out from the
> > rather traditionally European London, only to find
> > the "alternative environment", the German Zone
> > immediately after WWII, right in the middle of the Old
> > World. In this way _GR_ tries to dramatize the relation
> > between the West and its others without any Orientalist
> > recourse to romanticized realms outside the borders of
> > the West. As Derrida writes in "The Ends of
> > Man",  "every relation to the outside is very complex
> > and surprising." It is not enough to remain in one's
> > terrain, to apply "against the edifice the instruments
> > or stones available in the house." [~Heidegger] Yet it
> > is equally insufficient "to change terrain --- by
> > brutally placing oneself outside, and by affirming an
> > absolute break and difference." [~Nietzsche] Used alone
> > each strategy only confirms the inside which one tries
> > to transgress. Instead, "a new writing must weave and
> > interlace these two motifs of deconstruction. Which
> > amounts to saying that one must speak several languages
> > and produce several texts at once." This is what _GR_
> > arguably sets out doing, through its plural styles.