CIA

[Dave Monroe]

Very briefly ...  

--- wood jim <jim33wood at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> No, I know enough about the CIA to know it is not in
> the  book. I'm not an expert on the CIA. However, I
> know enough about the CIA and more importantly, I
> have read CL49 many times.  The elaborate acrobatics
> are indispensable only if you want to argue that the
> CIA is in the  book when it is not. The reason I am
> insisting on this, is not because I disagree so much
> with the conclusions one can arrive at by such a
> reading, although I do ultimately disagree with
> Hollander

Do keep in ind that I'm not submitting a defense of
Hollander's reading here, this is, I think, obviously,
 a far more general, far more fundamental point for me
...

> but because  if the CIA/JFK,
> Rockerfeller/Rothschild/Morgan/Pynchon &Co is in the
> book, of course they are not, but if they were, and
> if by being there, subtextually, on the underside of
> the tapastry, they not only inform, but as Hollander
> claims, motivate the author to write political
> satire than Pynchon's politics is not worthy.

Why so?  And why must Pynchon's politics be "worthy"? 
And, er, what do you mena by "worthy" here ...

> Moreover, if  these are what P writes about, he
> can't also be writing about what most critics agree
> he is focused on. 

And just what is that?  And why is any of this
mutually exclusive?  Not to mention the idea that,
were there even to be an identifiable majority, or
even plurality, opinion here, that sheer numbers would
ultimately count for anything ...
 
> Right, but the trace, the response to a pun or a
> joke or play on words, trivial or political, needs
> to be, once we are talking about the text and what
> the author has put there, and not merely our initial
> response to it, needs to be explained within the
> resonable parameters proscribed by the text. 

How to determine "reasonability" here ...

> There is no doubt that going out of the text,

"You" are always already "going out of the text," all
reading is intertextual, language, writing
"themselves" are hardly self-suffivient,
self-contained, much less is any given instantiation
thereof (e.g., a novel) ...

> intertextual reading and so on, is valuable, but it
> has limits, 

Of course, I'd argue precisely the opposite, but ...
but I'm curious as to what you might be proposing
"beyond" intertextual reading ("intertextual reading"
being nigh unto a redundancy to me, but ...) ...

> if and when a reader credits the outside
> the text reading or inter-textual to the author.

Er ...

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