pynchon-l-digest V2 #1681

[Doug Millison]

MD:
>GR is fiction and, given the extent to which it succeeds as such, one can, I
>think, safely assume P's goals in writing it were primarily esthetic, not
>historical or pedagogic.

How could we know this for sure? Still, it's nice to see that other 
P-listers like to speculate on P's intentions, and that we seem to 
have gotten past automatically castigating somebody for expressing 
same here on the list. Personally, I think Pynchon got to a point 
where he had become so full of his reading and study and 
understanding of history and politics and his response to American 
and other world literature and he had a story in his head that just 
had to come out and he fell in love with the words as they tumbled 
out and he found that he could live with them and shape them into the 
amazing narrative we have in GR, which continues what he started in 
V. and which spilled out into COL49 and Vineland and M&D -- but of 
course that's just bootless speculation, you wouldn't even believe it 
if Pynchon himself sat down and explained to you why he wrote it, 
because, after all, to the degree that his creativity rises up out of 
his unconscious, out of our "collective unconscious" (as good a term 
as any, I guess, although I like the way Walt Whitman talks when he 
says "The messages of great poets to each man and woman are, Come to 
us on equal terms, Only then can you understand us, We are no better 
than you, What we enclose you enclose, What we enjoy you may enjoy. 
Did you suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can 
be unnumbered Supremes, and that one does not countervail another. . 
and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their 
supremacy within them. ..." and I like Diana Ross and the Supremes, 
too), we just can't know where it really comes from can we.  But it's 
fun to think about, I think. Yes, your mileage may vary.

MD"
>Much of what is being said on this string as to what P means or teaches are
>inferences drawn from the novel by its readers.

Amen.  Actually, all of it, not "much of it."

rj:
>Locke's NYT review discloses somewhat stereotyped notions of "romantic love"
>and what should or can constitute emotional attachment or affection imo. He
>also misses the entire point of the final section of the novel, as the whole
>constructed realist/Modernist literary artifice comes tumbling down (i.e.
>de-constructs).

Locke's review provides an interesting window into GR's reception 
when new. Lots of good stuff has been written about it since then, 
too, and hindsight can be amazingly empowering. But, sometimes first 
impressions do manage to get to the heart of things. I think Locke is 
very perceptive with regard to the way he sees Pynchon using German 
history to explain American history.  If, as rj has suggested, Major 
Marvy somehow represents a sort of hero -- an excellent 
representative of the heartless bastards who actually manage the U.S. 
military-industrial complex, then and now,  in my opinion --  who or 
what does Blicero/Weissmann represent? What statement is Pynchon 
making about Nazi Germany -- and about the individuals, governments, 
corporations who supported their project and profited from it -- in 
his portrayal of that diseased, deluded, death-wishing, 
technology-worshipping predator?

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