Discussion Tip Of The Day

[Terry Flaherty]

Mike Weaver wrote:
> 
> >This strikes me as Pynchon stepping outside the fiction for a moment to
> >deliver a topical comment, and I presume that to be the voice of the
> >author. I think the verb tenses in the paragraph, which clearly separate
> >the narrative present of the V-Note from "today," the moment the sentence
> >is being written, support that reading.
> 
> Now I'm with Don on this one.  There are plenty of statements in GR which
> make best sense to me if taken as Mr P talking directly to his
> readers.  It's an aspect of GR which carries a lot of responsibility for my
> loyalty. Made me feel like I was engaged in an intimate intellectual
> relationship with the author.  The rest of the book serves, among other
> purposes, as elaborations and improvisations on those topical comments.
> 
> There is the question asked last year sometime as to who was the narrator
> of GR - Osbie Feel being one proposal.  Is this a p-listrift?  Those who
> ascribe the straight to camera statements to Mr P and those who favour a
> fictional narrator.
> 
> That heresy aside, another pertinent question is - which statements?  Which
> are clearly the narrator and which might be?

See the parable in GR 533-535, not that it is going to
resolve anything, but that's the point.