PO-PO-mo-JO (was PO's Vision)

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> Mr. Monroe (and all),
> 
> Many times I've had difficulty reading your posts.  But this one was a prime
> exception.
> 
> Lately I've begun to wonder if Mr. Pynchon has relied too heavily on
> references to other texts at the expense of his own.  Might this not be the
> indictment of Post-Modernism in general?

Post- modernism?  whatever the hell Post-modernism is, this
charge, the extensive referencing of texts, in TRP as in
T.S.. Eliot (interesting that both make extensive use of the
same exact sources), would indict Modernism not
Post-modernism. 

In GR TRP turns directly to Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
which epitomizes
many features of modernist fiction. 

Modernism in literature: cross textually diverse
cross-fertilization between cultures,  between art forms and
between disciplines-the need to confront violence, nihilism,
and despair; the fascination with, but fear of, the
unconscious; the centrality of a dramatized narrator who is
not omniscient but rather himself searching for
understanding; a symbolic richness which invites multiple
interpretations (influence of French Symbolism), radical
redefinition of the real (W and H James, Freud, Bergson)
Colonial programs, ruthless exploitation, journey (up the
Congo) or Modern (T.S. Eliot secularized) quest or symbolic
exploration into the darkest heart (consciousness) of Man,
manipulation of the reader's experience of time and space by
means of disruption of narrative chronology and
ontological/epistemological differentiation and the
representation of consciousness (stream and multiple) by the
description of events, and the use of the  reflexivity and
self-consciousness. 

When in April...
	Chaucer
April is the cruelest month...
	Eliot
April from the Short Stories to M&D
	Pynchon