answering jody Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1582

[Dave Monroe]

... now, er, KXX4493553, a.k.a. kwp, whether or not you intended to
"intervene" in our little "Australo-American" discussion, you've
nonetheless posted one of its best interventions to date.  So thanks
first off for that.  One thing in particular to keep in mind here is
that we are indeed dealing with novels, fictions, texts presented as
such, and holding them to the sort of verisimilitude one should expect
of a history, or the sort of methodological rigor one should expect of a
sociology, or the sort of logical coherence one should expect of a
philosophical work, is to a certain extent beside the point ...

Those Pynchonian texts can nonetheless prove surprisingly based in,
allusive to, historical/economic/whatever fact (and Charles Hollander in
particular has shown this), but they are indeed moreso about the the
problematics of representing, analyzing those "disasters of the 20th
century."  Their "emphasis" does indeed seem to be "not on artifacts but
on their transmission and reinscription; not on overturning the
hierarchy between canonical and apocryphal but on examining how the
canonical and apocryphal can do various kinds of cultural work for
variously positioned and constituted cultural groups," as Michael Berube
writes in particular of Gravity's Rainbow (Marginal Forces/Cultural
Centers, p. 229).

I am not so sure that Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, postmodernism, what
have you are resigned to "merely" (my scare quotes there) resigned to
interpreting the world rather than changing it--whether or not the
possible, probable claim that to interpret, reinterpret the world IS to
change it is tenable is another matter entirely.  But, again, that
"transmission," that "cultural work" ...

Both I and Mr. jbor there no doubt violently agree with each other, and
without said violence with you, in the singularity of the Holocaust, and
I am inclined charitably to read Doug on this as well, as I do not read
him as eliding or insisting on the interchangeability of those
"disasters" so much as noting that those Pynchonian texts (GR,
"luddite") do indeed seem to treat them as of a piece, as, say,
emanating from that "factory system" and headed for seeming
"convergence."  And these issues will no doubt be of particular import
again when we come to the analogy between the German slaughter of the
Herero in SW Africa and the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Europe in V.
...

But this is indeed where it is important to emphasize caution in reading
a text as if its author writes what we "know"--based on her "genius,"
her "vision," hers "intent," not to mention our own perceived affinities
with her politics et al.--she must be saying.  Again, it is only ethical
to read in a charitable manner, as if we are, indeed, reading the
intentional, coherent work of a given author, but it does no
one--author, reader, text--any favors merely to exchange (economically,
one-for-one), return gifts here.   I'm not so sure about the
interpretive potlatch we often seem to have going instead, but ... but
much will inevitably be said, written, that was not necessarily
intended, which was not necessarily meant, but will, indeed, mean.  And,
again, keep in mind that a novel is not a philosophical or economic or
historical treatise, nor what it "meant" to be ...