VV(13): Enters Weismann

[Judy]

>From Michel Ryckx:
 > Indeed, I do not agree with rj on this one.  Being aware of the problems
arising
> when trying to establish a connection between V.'s Weissmann and Gravity's
> Rainbow's Weissmann/Blicero, one may go on talking about this --I admit,
> puzzling-- Weissmann figure.  Remains the fact, that everywhere he
figures,
> there's pain; which is why I don't like the character, be it in V. or in
Gravity's
> Rainbow.  In the passages we meet him in V., one could concentrate on
Mondaugen
> seeing everything through a mirror.  On the other hand, there's no mention
of a
> mirror  -or another filtre through which Mondaugen perceives-- when
Mondaugen and
> Vera meet, and Meroving is being 'pulled by the hand' by Weissmann
(237.19).

I agree that it is hard to like Weissmann. But this is not surprising since
I find it impossible to identify with many, if any, of the characters that
appear. Either there is pain and/or violence, uncertainty, etc. associated
with them, or we move into other times and places with new characters taking
over and have to shift our thinking. Add to this that it is easy to argue
that the narrators' version of events is suspect, one has great difficulty
in identifying with those involved or trusting one way or another of looking
at the whole thing.Yet this is why I enjoy the actual process of reading
Pynchon. I'm always on guard and I'm always wondering what do I think here?
Questions that keep coming up for me (like what is going on between Vera and
Weissmann in that mirror?) force me to think of what's going on in the
present tense rather than accepting it as a done deed and a judgement made.
The question forces me to replay the scene over and over so that I can
figure out what it means and by doing so I am involved personally, in the
present, in the whole process, in a way that I would otherwise not be. Alain
Robbe-Grillet's work also does this for me and I know that it is this
involvement that gives me the reading pleasure it does. Of course, this
doesn't mean that I don't like looking at all the detail in the books and
trying to put it all together somehow. However, it does mean that I must
take my process of reading into account while I am making connections later.
In "For a New Novel," Robbe-Grillet describes people's reactions to the film
"Last Year in Marienbad" (which is an interesting discussion in itself) and
then writes:

"Similarly, it was absurd to suppose that in the novel "Jealousy", published
two years earlier, there existed a clear and unambiguous order of events,
one which was not that of the sentences of the book, as if I had diverted
myself by mixing up a pre-established calendar the way one shuffles a deck
of cards. The narrative was on the contrary made in such a way that any
attempt to reconstruct an external chronology would lead, sooner or later,
to a series of contradictions, hence to an impasse. And this not with the
stupid intention of disconcerting the Academy, but precisely because there
existed for me no possible order outside of that of the book. The latter was
not a narrative mingled with a simple anecdote external to itself, but again
the very unfolding of a story which had no other reality than that of the
narrative, an occurrence which functioned nowhere else except in the mind of
the invisible narrator, in other words of the writer, and of the reader."
(p.154)

- Judy