GRGR(30): You will want cause and effect.

[jbor]

> Take a look at the language of McHale, he describes the
> reader of GR as, "conned, bullied, betrayed, embarrassed,
> conditioned, lured, offended, and he applies the most
> horrible metaphors in GR to the reader as if the reader were
> a character, a dog or one "fox" in the narrative.

Yes, strong words. But *GR* isn't exactly a picnic for the reader either.
And it's not that McHale "applies" these metaphors himself. His thesis is
that the text (eg. in the ambiguity and indeterminacy of first and second
person pronoun usages) actually addresses the reader thus.

> The reader
> has been conditioned and the painful de-conditioning  is
> beyond the zero, yes the reader becomes, first paranoid and
> next anti-paranoid

It is only then that the reader becomes capable of moving beyond both of
these "conditions". Not "de-conditioned" as such, but aware of the
conditioning as it has been imposed.

> he quotes GR.343,

p. 434 actually

> "If there is
> something comforting - religious - if you want - about
> paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing
> is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can
> bear for long."

Yes: "us". Not Slothrop ("he") or "the characters" (them).

> This is not only a (mis)application of the
> metaphor in GR

How so?

>  not to mention the terms Paranoia and
> Anti-paranoia

Pynchon's or McHale's use of the terms? Or McHale's use of Pynchon's use of
the terms?

>  it's good evidence against Modernist reading
> of Postmodernist texts

This is a (mis)application of McHale's chapter title.

----------
>From: Terrance <Lycidas at worldnet.att.net>
>Subject: Re: GRGR(30): You will want cause and effect.
>Date: Wed, Jul 5, 2000, 7:45 PM
>