Pragmatism--Not Pynchon related

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 10 May 2000, Terrance wrote:

> Dewey and Rorty:
> 
> 
> If we believe Rorty, then we believe that our identities are
> (and only can be) our
> individual and communal self-descriptions.

On the other hand how many contemporary philosophers can we reasonably 
call upon to be brave enough to adopt anything short of fairly extreme
positions of skepticism with regard to certitude in human knowledge? The
world of philosophical thought is too old, has been around too
long. For every proposed solution to one of the age old problems there is
a plausible reason why it won't hold water. Scientists count themselves
lucky to  be less burdened by this sort of thing. If the hypothesis
explains the empirical findings satisfactorily they've done good
science--nobody worries whether the hypothesis is true of not, much less
just or not. These concepts are hardly in their vocabularies. Novelists
are unfortunately caught in the middle of all this.

Rob J. recently suggested that P may have intentionally left the end of GR
in the kind of muddle many of us find it to be in for philosphical-type
reasons. Postmodern reasons. R was talking about the
indeterminate outcomes of so much at the end of the book I
believe. Considering the state a lot of literary and philosophical
thinking in the early seventies--as a result of the "failure of the
sixties" presumably--I think R's position has a certain amount of
merit. Exactly what was a respectable still fairly young highbrow novelist
to do but follow the "french" lead.

Perhaps the book is a child of the seventies in several ways. It's been
suggested that the absense of emphasis on the Holocaust may stem
from the fact that that subject had been done to death earlier. I don't
mean this to sound disrespectful but it's probably a fact.

Anyway my point isn't GR particularly but novel writing in general. I must
admit that though I'm a Pynchon fan I don't much approve of requiring
novels to conform to so called philosophical truth if that is indeed what
P was about in GR.  (of course P may have thought that his book's ending 
made perfect sense in which case all signals are off) Not surprisingly I
tend to like realist novels.  One reason Roth's novels are so good to my
way of thinking  perhaps is they don't care a fig about whether the
protagonists' positions are true or fair (or whatever) though they may
well be so. But the emotional experience in them is rendered so
beautifully and so skillfully. Getting this emotional kick is the best
remaining reason for reading novels in my humble opinion.

			P.