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[Dave Monroe]

Very quickly.  One reader's "weaknesses" are, here,
apparently, another reader's (i.e., me), well, not
weaknesses, I guess.  I think it's been pointed out
that some of the complaints made about TCOL49 here are
pretty much true of any of Pynchon's fiction to some
degree or another ...  

MalignD, I think, wants, if not answers, a way to
derive them.  Not having the answers I think s/he'd
like to be able to derive are, i think, what has kept
the novel from collapsing for me, has kept me
rereading it at least annually (if not more
frequently) for some time now ...  

Hollander's reading actually had me quite depressed
for days, thinking, well, that's it, pin to balloon,
until I could convince myself that there was indeed
more to be said, that all the stuff about epistemology
and litearture and politics and what have you that I'd
been intuiting still remained of interest ...

But it did bring me to the very provisional hypothesis
I've made here of late, that perhaps what was to be
learned was pretty much on the surface, not to mention
out in the streets, that the novel is, among many,
many other things, an allegory of, a meditation on,
whatever, America, America in the 60s, America after
JFK, DDE, whoever, and political quietism in the face
of impending realities therein (and without). 
Something like that ...

Anyway, those four possibilities, generated by a
binary nonetheless, keep in mind those excluded
middles, those fine graduations between, elaborate
hybridities of them all ...


--- Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:
>  
> > is Trystero real?  Is Inverarity (for some reason)
> setting her up?  Is she imagining Trystero?  Is she
> imagining someone setting her up to believe in 
> Trystero?  
> 
> But then, after the alternatives are spread before
> us:
> 
> "...and if there was just America then it seemed the
> only way she could continue and manage to be at all
> relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed
> full circle into some paranoia."
> 
> Which says to me that Oedipa has answered all the
> above in the affirmative, i.e., any of those options
> must be preferrable to "just America." The real
> question, for me, is to get a sense of what Pynchon
> is referring to with the phrase "just America." To
> answer that question, imo, is something which
> requires entertaining material from the rest of his
> ouevre, and, perhaps, the way he has conducted
> himself as an American novelist during his run. Now
> it may be that including the connections in Lot 49-
> both thematic and by characters- to the more
> "important" works, and even the personal choices he
> has made, is not a fair and objective way to judge
> the value of Lot 49 itself.
> 
> But America is not fair, nor for many is it just,
> nor for my money is Pynchon only concerned with
> writing novels that appeal to the refined aesthetic
> sensibilities of those in a comfortable enough
> position to choose "just America" over "some
> paranoia.
> 
> All of which makes me enjoy Pynchon more, and begs
> the question: how could an author of such incredible
> gifts write such a weak novel unless he was
> deliberately attempting to shove it up the ass of
> the critics? Because if he were not attempting to do
> that, than he is truly an enigma.


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