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

[jbor]

In the article/chapter McHale addresses the range of contexts in which the
second person pronoun is used in *GR*, as per the example above. The point
is that the use of this pronoun almost always introduces an ambiguity (or
several) into the text when it occurs, for as well as the specific narrative
possibilities there is also the actual reader's kneejerk response to this
form of direct address (as per the language of advertising, for example).
The reader is (often? usually? always?) drawn into the narrative as both
addressee and co-respondent by the trope, and McHale points out how Pynchon
manipulates this structure deliberately to create such indeterminacy and
unnerve, or defamiliarise, the reader. In the example cited the parenthetic
second person address could be the author himself, an implied author, a
narrator, or another character addressing Slothrop, or Slothropian
self-address (soliloquy), or it could be an interpolated aside to the reader
(real or implied) from any one or all of these vantages, or it could be
simply a rhetorical flourish used to emphasise an idea or theme -- there is
no way to establish certainty one way or another. All possibilities
ultimately co-exist within the text. (Both/and, not either/or.)

Second person address is nothing new in fiction, but it is generally
consistently-modulated or else the grammatical, syntactic and/or semantic
arrangements make it clear exactly who is addressing whom, and so no such
ambiguity is allowed to exist. (At least, this is the convention.) However,
Pynchon actively seeks ambiguity by constantly (or seemingly) varying the
usage and also by virtue of his trademark stylistic devices (ellipsis,
parenthesis, conditional constructions, sentence fragments etc) which
undermine single "correct" readings. His texts strive to resist definitive
interpretation (though they can be deconstructed).

The notion of a "meta-reader" draws -- I think -- on Wolfgang Iser's model
of the "implied reader", but is a step beyond it again. In *The Implied
Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett*
(Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1974) Iser proposes the notion of an
implied reader in the text, a "standpoint" or "role" towards which the
structural devices of the text are directed, and from which the actual
reader is able to assemble meaning. This "wandering viewpoint" enables the
reader to insert consistent and logical approximations in order to counter
textual ambiguities and discontinuities of meaning in the text. The function
of the "implied reader", then, is that of a pivot, or hinge: the reader's
recognition of and empathy with the author's projected audience. A reader
who corresponds to and sympathetically enacts this role in fact partakes in
a form of protagonism. The reader who appraises the text at one or several
removes from the "implied reader", divorced and resistant to the role
whether through temperament, culture, caste or political persuasion,
necessarily becomes an antagonist. Satire and irony can further complicate
the equation. There could be an implied reader of the text (not necessarily
a character) whose ignorance or bigotry is satirised; beyond this though the
actual reader is meant to pick up on the satire, and is also an implied
reader (once removed).

In a later work Iser refines and restates the notion of the "implied reader"
as follows:
> Texts contain certain conditions of actualization that will allow their
> meaning to be assembled in the responsive mind of the recipient. The
> concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual structure anticipating
> the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him [sic]: This
> concept prestructures the role to be assumed by each recipient and this
> holds true even when texts deliberately appear to ignore their possible
> recipient or actually exclude him. Thus the concept of the implied reader
> designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the
> reader to grasp the text.
See Iser, *The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response* (Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1978, p. 34)

Iser's theoretical model perhaps derives from the work of Wayne Booth who,
citing an even earlier article by Walker Gibson ('Authors, Speakers,
Readers, and Mock Readers', College English 11.5, February 1950, pp.
265-269), refers to a category of "mock reader" which is a "mask" or
"costume" the real reader takes on in order to appropriately experience the
text. See Booth, *The Rhetoric of Fiction* (University of Chicago, Chicago,
1961, pp. 49-52, 138, 363-364). In proposing this feature Booth also
acknowledges Henry James' remark that "the author makes his reader very much
as he makes his characters." (p. 49)

These theories all presuppose that the author is interested in establishing
a single and determinate semantic context within the narrative: however,
Pynchon deliberately subverts this literary convention in his text. From the
snippet from McHale cited, and the analogy with Blicero, I'm not quite sure
but I think McHale is proposing this meta-reader as an idealisation --
someone possessing complete and authoritative understanding of the text who
does not, will not, and cannot exist in real terms, but who the reader
perceives should, or could, exist. The reader is conditioned by her prior
experience of fiction, and the model of knowledge to which she has been
habituated (i.e. epistemology) to vainly seek to emulate this vantage of
comprehensive interpretation. Pynchon demonstrates that such a vantage,
either in fiction or life, does not, in fact, exist. The reader is thus
forced to reassess her relationship both to the text as word, and the world
as text (i.e. the shift to ontological pluralism).

best


----------
>From: Cjhurtt6 at aol.com
>To: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: grgr (21): "you used to know what these words mean" (p. 472)
>Date: Sun, Mar 5, 2000, 1:22 PM
>

> In a message dated 3/4/00 8:48:31 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de writes:
>
> <<
>   "pynchon's captain blicero imagines a lover, or rather an antilover,
> african
>   and black where his northern katje is blond, superior to the 'oven-game'
> they
>   play where katje seems trapped in it. 'perhaps', he muses, 'the black girl
> is a
>   genius of meta-solutions - knocking over the chessboard, shooting the
> referee'
>   (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.