Homage and Imposture

[Dave Monroe]

As did Dante, to begin with, and, well, just about anybody and everybody who's
ever written a "literary" text ("allude to contemporaries," that is).  And no
such allusions--no allusions whatsoever--necessarily detract from any give
text.  Certainly not from Gravity's Rainbow.  Many "contemporary"--or, at any
rate, anachronistic, from within the narrative presumably set in/shortly after
WWII--references, many contemporary with the writing, publication of the novel,
signalling, perhaps, that GR is just as much about events beyond that immediate
setting (e.g., Vietnam, Civil Rights, The Cold War).  In fact, good thing
Pynchon alludes to Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, as it at least acknowledges some
similarities, an influence, a debt, perhaps, even.  But note that photograph in,
at least, earlier eds. of the book (as i recall, it's not in both copies I have)
...

domine vobiscuits wrote:

> Shakespeare (sorry to use a Shakespeare card) alluded to contemporaries from
> time to time.  (I
> know there's a fallacy here, but...)
>
> The allusion to Reed in GR, for example, (re)establishes problematic temporal
> issues in the text (i.e., the events in the text take place (where we can
> clearly establish them) in the 1940s, but the narrator(s) (who occasionally
> enter the minds of the characters) are alluding to a text published in 1972).
> I have trouble seeing the Reed reference as a (negative)
> detraction/distraction (at the very least, P alludes to an alternate history
> within his own alternate history).  I what way does an
> allusion to a contemporary author become a detraction while allusions to
> _The_White_Goddess_ or Rilke or Plasticman enrich (or enRich) the text?