media proof, pynchon and the media

[Arthur Chesterfield]

--- Tory Sterling <forpynchon at hotmail.com> wrote:
> at least some kind of evidence beyond faces
> presented by the media with it's 
> admittedly incestous relationship with the
> government seems reasonable for a 
> war. is it as an abc newsanchor that the former
> pentagon public information 
> officer, the one in charge of government news
> releases during the persian 
> gulf war, comes from? the persian gulf war which has
> shown to have been 
> completely misrepresented by the media. quite
> amazing how quickly people's 
> faith in the government changes when we feel
> threatened.
> 
> (has benefited from his intro to media studies
> class)
> 
> pynchon, pynchon... pynchon doesn't pay much
> attention to the issue of 
> modern media, does he? i can think of vineland and 
> jumping through seeming 
> windows, and i guess that would be a flat-out
> rejection of the media?

I don't think Vineland is a flat out rejection of the
media. Boy that would be a stupid book and not very
interesting or entertaining. In fact, I would argue
that Pynchon's books celebrate media and embrace it
even as they critique it. Moreover, I would argue that
because social and cultural traditions (even war) are
represented in the media there are formal intellectual
assumptions, links if you will, to the movies and TV
shows, that literature can't avoid. 
Movies and TV dramas, as Vineland demonstrates, are
linked to the history of literature as, say Eliot's
Plays are linked to Greek Drama. All may be called
narratives. Dave Monroe, responding, I guess, to
Paul's rather confusing post, mentioned Ulysses.
Vineland, like Joyce's materwork, parodies the past
and distorts it, in part by introducing modern
equivalents. Pynchon, like Joyce, is always playing at
doubles. The media permits the flexibility of theatre
that novels don't quite allow. Dave Monroe also
mentioned the fact that P updates or refines his
novels up to the last minute. This is obviously the
case with all his novels. Media permits a reshaping, a
bending, even a reversal of plots, inversion of
images, that novels, the reals and reels turning
within the boundaries of book ends, do not. The film
will either run out or break. Labyrinths and Circles
and snakes with their tails in their mouths, odysseys,
journeys out or in are attempts to push the envelop,
but all are limited to the work and not to the (mind)
noetic mysteries of the novelist's creative process or
the reader's. The media, like traditional art, is
culturally stabilizing. It absorbs shocks and shields
the public from the impact of information conveyed. An
alternative media does nothing different. It's only
propaganda from a different angle. It's very
disturbing that the Pynchon list should be filled with
all these shocking stories from the media. Pynchon's
novels dive deep (to use Melville's apt phrase) into
these issues. The media feeding frenzy, be it Noam
Chomsky's knee jerk reaction to USA military strikes
on Afghanistan or Bush's stupid blurbs about a
Crusade, is all surface shimmer and blinding light. 

Diving to Brazil for the Hoildays, 

AHC






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