GRGR(30): You will want cause and effect.
Paul Mackin
pmackin at clark.net
Thu Jul 6 07:35:11 CDT 2000
On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Dave Monroe wrote:
> A flashing thought: modernism giving way to, dissipating into, postmodernism as Gravity's
> Rainbow, er, "progresses"? A la Tyrone Slothrop? All those little, seemingly less and
> less, I don't know, diegetic, all those undigested, if I may, narratives, as the novel
> unfolds, reaching a fevered pitch, critical mass, whatever, in the final section, esp.
> near the end ... would, of, course, allegorize the very shifts in politics, economics,
> society, culture, whatever, Gravity's Rainbow seems to be mapping ...
>
Yes and it's the divided opinion ("opinion even at the start was
divided") that is the "fatal weakness" of the Counterforce which happens
to be what Postmodernist is thought to be about. Divided opinion and
Difference, that is. Plus it's that "fatal weakness" that (ironically) we
"want to hear about."
P.
> Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> > Postmodernism may be something like Slothrop near
> > the end of the book.
> >
> > "We were never that concerned with Slothrop qua Slothrop," a spokesman
> > for the Counterforce admitted recently in an interview with the Wall
> > Street Journal.
> >
> > Interviewer: You mean, then, that he was more a rallying-point.
> >
> > Spokesman: No, not even that. Opinion even at the start was divided. It
> > was one of our fatal weaknessnes. [I'm sure you want to hear about fatal
> > weaknesses.] Some called him a "pretext." Others felt that he . . . .
> >
> > p. 738
> >
> > P.
>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list