The Uncertain Virgin (was- Evan & Hugh)

[jporter]

> From: David Morris <fqmorris at yahoo.com>
> Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 20:23:24 -0800 (PST)
>
> 
> Michael,
> 
> I completely agree, but our focus is different.  These are Stencil's stories,

Stencil is a fig. A shared fig, but a fig nonetheless. The stories are a
negotiated space between the publisher and any given reader. The author is
just another reader. After publication an author may come to completely
disagree with what is now being mechanically reproduced and distributed en
mass, but now is helpless to alter, except through drastic enforcement of
copyrights, or other rearguard actions. Hence, Stencil is a figure for the
latent drive toward self-annhilation (cf. Laius) inherent in the legal trope
known as a copyright (ownership of copy), hence the name: Stencil. Stencil
also represents "boundary conditions" which both permit and constrain the
reproduction of a story in any given context. But while Stencil may encode a
specific ordering of subsystems that make up the whole text, Stencil cannot
hope to completely control the cultural field in which the copies will be
shared, i.e., the context.

> but this time they are oral, told to a psychiadent.  Even though Eigenvalue
> interrupts midstream, lest we forget to be skeptical, there is no doubt that
> the story we read is far beyond the spoken medium.  This is a cinematic trick
> as well: the narrator begins to speak and we fade to a dramatic scene.  In
> between the narrator and the film scene is a director, a script, and a cast of
> actors.  Of course Pynchon is demonstrating the multiple levels of uncertainty
> in narrative.  But to stop there is to discount any further value in the text,
> any message beyond uncertainty.

The trick learned early by, e.g., the code we all share in our cells, is to
make use of ubiquitous uncertainty, especially to outsmart the t......o,
which would seek to copyright uncertainty, and tax all transmission of
messages. Without mistakes there is no meaning. By embracing uncertainty and
"incorporating" uncertainty into the encoding process, the encoder allows
itself to be aligned with unforeseen and changing contingencies of the
context into which its offspring will be released. But the price for opening
"the code" to the vagaries of the context is a loss of control. Is such a
sacrifice justified? It's probably the price of doing business.
 
> I propose that one might read with a suspended disbelief, and thus recieve a
> message which might otherwise be filtered out.  Uncertainty might still
> remain,
> but it could be tolerated.
> 

Indeed. I would find it difficult to function in a context where uncertainty
were not tolerated. Speaking of which, isn't it time we started to
demonstrate a little Sympathy for the Inanimate around these parts? Who's to
say what challenges our own children might have to cope with, when we're
long gone.

jody