paranoia: 12 kinds in P's fiction

[wood jim]

> 
>I probably should not have even brought GR into it, 
 
"GR brings itself into things. Can't be helped. Lack
of manners."

AND 

"Not that I'm giving Driblette some kind of authorial
voice, but this is a pretty
straightforward argument of the novel, isn't it?" 

ME: 

One of the arguments, that's for sure. 
And so, it's seems safe to assume that
the "implied author"  (Booth)  has given 
life to not a  few of the clues to 
Oedipa (the reader critic, perhaps mock reader)  by
blowing them out his ass. 

This is, as you say, one of the reasons why this
otherwise not very great "novel" is so 
popular in the University. BTW, Although I agree with
MalignD, CL49 has many shortcomings, I don't
think Oedipa is one of them. I think Oediap  is
another 
reason why CL49 is popular in the Universities (its
being short and its being nearly postmodernist
[McHale]
and thus a very good introduction to post WWII
American Fiction, are some other reasons,  as you
noted).

Again I turn to Booth who turns to Walker Gibson's
essay, "Author's Speakers, Readers and Mock Readers"
and to GR again, sorry, no propper manners, where
I suspect that the "YOU" is more a mock reader at
times, being "a person we refuse to become, a mask we
refuse to  put on, a role we refuse to play." But as
readers of GR, particularly as male readers imho, we
can't refuse, unless of course we toss the book away
and refuse to read it. This is one of the things
that makes GR Great! Booth, talking about the mock
reader, says, 

"We may exhort ourselves to read tolerantly, 
we may quote Coleridge (although critics are 
more often quoting Keats--"Negative Capabiltiy"--
these days and not Coleridge and that's a bit of a
shame)
on the willing suspension of disbelief until
we think ourselves totally suspended in a relative
universe, and still we will find many books
that depend on 'beliefs' or 'attitudes' --the term
we choose is unimportant here--that we cannpt adopt 
even hypothetically as our own." 

What's more, with Great craftmanship (say Pynchon or
Nabokov) we cannot ever be sure if we should 
blame ourselves for this or the author.




This is not the case with Oedipa at all. 
In fact, Oedipa, it seems to me, in some ways, 
like Slothrop (although again, GR is rude)  combines
Benny and Stencil and the humor of the book, and 
I think it is very funny, depends upon our 
idenification with, to at least a limited extent, 
Oedipa Maas. 


John wrote: 

COL49: Paranoia is both diegetic and metaphoric -
Oedipa's growing paranoia
mirrors our own, our need to create connections and
find plots, patterns etc. It gets
difficult, and it may be a fool's quest. BUT it's a
tease in this novel, as textual
analysis, even the idea of research, historiography,
etc are picked apart whilst
simultaneously necessary to ENJOY the book, ie at
least a reasonable knowledge of
Revenge Tragedies or at least Jacobean theatre is
required, as well as a fair
knowledge of plenty of other 'classic' texts which are
alluded to. SO there is a sort
of paradox in reading the thing, which of course is
like reading itself, blah blah blah,
anyway, that's all part of the reason this one is on
college reading courses, along
with the all-important fact that it is short.


Yes, agree 100%

But, there is of course, revelation, the 
meatphysical (tower, the malignat magic, solipsism,
the sacred and the profane etc.) the 
religious partanoia too. This is of course
a majopr theme in V. (Henry Adams). 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/