Pynchon the gentle sadomasochist

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Several times recently the following (and similar type) quotes from
> McHale's "Modernist Reading, Post-Modern Text: The Case of Gravity's
> Rainbow" have been discussed here.
> 
> "Pynchon's reader has every right to feel conned, bullied,
> betrayed. Indeed, these reponses are the essense of the aesthetic effect
> of Gravity's Rainbow."
> 
> I'm getting used to the words through repitition so they don't quite have
> the same shock effect as the first time I read them. Nevertheless I still
> have trouble reconciling the force of the verbal adjectives used with
> writing which inspite of the often express cruelty and grisliness of
> subject matter has always struck me as essentially playful with regard to
> the relation between writer and reader.
> 
> However, to get to the point, I have just read the last chapter of
> McHale's later book "Post Modernist Fiction" (1985) and have come to
> appreciate that there may be connotations of "conned, bullied, and
> betrayed" (or assaulted and agressivity) that may that may not be so
> antithetical to me with regard to P's writing.

Do have different books? In my copies Postmodernist Fiction
(1987) was first, Constructing Postmodernism (1992), as I
have stated here several times, "corrected" some of the
problems in the first book. Chapters 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,,10, of
Constructing Postmodernism (1992) were originally published
as essays, studies, reviews, between 1979 and 1991, so this
may account for this?  

> 
> In discussing the use of the second person pronoun as a means of
> violating the ontological boundaries between writer, reader, and
> character, McHale comes to the conclusion that the actual subject
> matter of the passages may be erotic love between the writer and
> the reader (or text) including appropriate sadomasochistic accompaniments.
> So that's a little different, isn't it? I don't feel so bad
> now. Handcuffs and whips may be the images I should be keeping in
> mind but they are clearly only props.  Pynchon is my playful lover and
> will do me no harm.


This is in Postmodernist Fiction (1987) PoMo simulates
Death....is a laboratory for experiments...oh boy, I'm on my
knees, lick, the leather, a Pointsman with a plastic penis
stands over me as I read, reading whip welts and scars and
reefers and shivers, cut my throat....oh! God, oh!
> 
> Incidently McHale, in the second work, gives examples from other writers
> of this kind of second person pronoun used in making metaleptic love, and
> I am convinced that the examples for Pynchon are materially less
> threatening than those for comparable writers.  Other writers address
> you as bastard and pathetic. Never P. One of the examples from Pynchon was
> that lovable "Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it
> to be?"

I don't know, after reading Fish on Milton, and McHale on
Fielding, I feel whipped. So if you doubt Dear, dear, little
reader, that there is price for your painful paradise just
look in the reader mirror and read the scars. 


Beat me
Hit me
make it rough
I just love this Pynchon stuff