media proof, pynchon and the media

[Paul Mackin]

Speaking of driving to Brazil what about The Boys From Brazil?

        P.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arthur Chesterfield" <a_chesterfield at yahoo.com>
To: "Tory Sterling" <forpynchon at hotmail.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: media proof, pynchon and the media


> --- 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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