Comprising confrontations in _GR_

[Dave Monroe]

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.