Assault with a heavy book

[The Great Quail]

Barbara writes,

>Remember last week, Quail, Doug said (somewhat sarcastically) that 
>some folks here on the P-List didn't take Pynchon seriously enough,

He was hardly being sarcastic. It is one of the many axes in his 
quiver that he feels the need to constantly keep in grinding rotation.

>and you wrote back  pissed that he would make such a 'self-serving' comment?

Yes, and I stand by what I stated clearly, which is that Doug 
believes the only way to take Pynchon seriously in a political 
context is to agree with Doug's interpretations of Pynchon. If you do 
not do that, he accuses you of not taking the author seriously, and 
so on.

>Then I defended him saying, I thought it was an "astute observation" 
>but didn't wanna cite any evidence because I didn't think it would 
>do any good? Well, you said something in your latest rant to me that 
>I think serves the point well:
>"That's why it's fiction, Barbara. The best use I could think of for
>Gravity's Rainbow in a real life situation where someone keeps
>stepping up a holy war against you is to use it to whack them on the
>head before they stick an AK-47 up your taxpaying ass."
>
>If the Master himself can't convince you, what chance do I stand?

I happen to take Pynchon very seriously -- as a novelist, artist, and 
social critic. However, I wrote that because I fail to find a 
coherent and useful philosophical approach the current political 
conflict and war in "Gravity's Rainbow," and because I feel that your 
and Doug's use of the "war that doesn't end" trope is useless to form 
any real basis of political response to this situation. Just because 
I greatly admire and respect Pynchon as a writer does not mean that I 
will slavishly devote and subordinate my thinking to any one of his 
novels, nor will I use other people's interpretations of "The 
Master's" work as an intellectual acid test or ideological criterion. 
In my world, Pynchon is a Master of fiction, not "the Master" of all 
that is Right and Good and Correct.

I hope that clears things up.

I do find one thing odd, though, between you and Doug, and that is 
the capacity you both have to single-mindedly defend each other at 
all costs. So you turn a blind eye to "reasonable Doug" when he 
flares up and then is proven wrong about the whole maus incident, and 
Doug totally ignores your ludicrous statements about the Holocaust. 
Lord knows, if jbor, myself, Terrance, or David would have said what 
you did, Doug would already be on the phone to the Eli Wiesenthal 
foundation!

--Quail