grgr (21): "you used to know what these words mean" (p. 472)

[Lycidas at worldnet.att.net]

Cjhurtt6 at aol.com wrote:

McHale: 
>   (102). the metareader of  g r a v i t y ' s   r a i n b o w, overturner of
>   chessboards and shooters of referees, is called upon to be a 'genius of
>   metasolutions' by every second-person pronoun in the novel."
>   >>

> i'm sorry but what the fuck is a meta-reader? this is not meant as a jab at
> you or mchale, i honestly can't wrap my head around such a word.


Speaking of Epigraphs, McHale's Epigraph to this section is:

"Reader take care, I have unadvisedly led thee to the Top of
as high a Hill as Mr. Allworthy's, and how to get thee down
without breaking thy Neck, I do not well know." 
						(Henry Fielding 1974: I, 43-4)

In the 1963 edition, "Bold New Movie" only 75 cents, is
Frank Kermode's Afterword. 

Worth reading, not metas. 

The meta-reader is simply Pynchon's extension of what
Feilding was up to a long time ago (1749), drawing the
reader into the novel, including, implicating, YOU,
constantly soliciting participation. McHale puts a
Postmodern spin on it, usually with the mirror, that mirror
has been around since Plato, but it keeps turning. In these
postmodern (Sophistic, sorry rj) days, when "TEXTS" are the
world, a new semantic epoch, we've been here before, the
mirror is held up to YOU, surprised?  

"We see ourselves mirrored in Pynchon's characters, at whom
menacing fingers are repeatedly pointed, towards whom
ominous faces turn to gaze....But Pynchon also solicits our
participation at a higher, reflexive level of reading...By
confronting us with irreducibly ambiguous, or, better,
multiguos features such as the second-person pronoun,
Pynchon compels us to become MEATREADERS, readers of our own
(and others') readings --and, more to the point, of our own
inevitable MISreadings."

Meta-readers seek meta-solutions. Too many meta and you
might catch something. I meta in a gin mill and took her
home for a little meta, meta, meta, and caught some
metasmeta, it's so sophistic.

The solution though, is exactly what we need. We need to
account for all the contradictions, subversions, reflexive
levels, ambiguities, but we don't need to meta to geta
home.