... never an open and shut case

[jbor]

----------
>From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>

> Something in
> the specific p-text must be causing this. Would these readers interpret
> other swinging or cool  writers in a similar way? Is there any way to
> approach this. Hate to say it but I just don't know.

I think it comes back to the way that the Pynchonian text operates as an
"open" entity (as against the "closed" aesthetic of Modernism) whereby
narrative vantage is unfixed and thus the reader is acknowledged as bringing
a separate perspective to the text in the first place. I think because of
this textual "openness" the reader -- each and every reader -- is
reenfranchised in the reading of the text, and is thus able to put forward a
range of (creative/speculative ... analytical ... comparative ... perhaps
mutually exclusive) interpretations and follow up on any or all of these in
a manner which she or he thinks fit. It strikes me that the debates here
more often than not centre on *interpretations* of the text rather than on
the texts themselves. I think it's no surprise that in considering any of
the various interpretations put forward here or in the critical literature
(interpretations coloured as they are by individual reader's prior
assumptions, tastes and whatever other hobby-horses he or she might have at
the time) that "you're apt now and then to get a bit of lime-green in with
your rose, as they say."

best