Pynchon's literary genius

[Doug Millison]

No offense, taken, Dave, as we've discussed offlist. We can disagree, 
as reasonable people, on what might or might not be said about 
authorial intention.  I understand, I think, at least the broad 
outlines of the literary-critical approach that would refuse to 
consider authorial intentions, but I don't buy it.  Why limit reading 
in this way?  I think it's perfectly acceptable to approach a book 
like GR, or M&D, or Vineland, or COL49, or V., and take into 
consideration the text, and the author (including biographical 
influences and intentions, conscious or otherwise), and the various 
intersubjective realities that prepare us to receive such a book and 
which give us so much of the language and preconceived notions with 
which we respond to such a book, and take into consideration as well 
the actual social and material structures of the world around us that 
also play a part in the way we experience such a book -- there are 
lots of ways to read a book and talk about it, after all.  Why close 
off one or another of these avenues of delight, when you can enjoy 
them all? I truly don't see the need to "exercise extreme caution" , 
I think it's perfectly OK to be all over the place when it comes to 
appreciating my favorite works of art, because the best of them are 
all over the place themselves.  I'm not working for tenure, after 
all, or concerned about having to fit in with a particular group of 
cultural workers who only accept one particular way of looking at 
that blackbird. Certainly in the hands of a good critic, any or all 
of these approaches can make sense and help us to better understand 
Pynchon's and the other literary masterpieces we spend time reading 
and thinking about and discussing and returning to again and again. 
I'm quite happy with the kind of literary essay that John Leonard 
gives us in his recent _New York Review of Books_ appreciation of 
Richard Powers, for example, which dares to consider Powers' life and 
artistic influences and the wonder of the texts themselves (or 
Coetzee's essay on Benjamin in the same issue), and the kind of 
reading of Pynchon that Charles Hollander provide, and the rather 
more austere approaches represented in the latest issue of Pynchon 
Notes (which itself does a fine job of offering apreciations of 
Pynchon's works that, in toto, cover most of the aspects I briefly 
sketch above, having published articles that deal with Pynchon's 
biography, & etc.). Certainly there's room for them all:  both/and, 
not either/or. If a critic chooses to play by a certain set of rules, 
that's fine, but that doesn't mean I have to agree to read that way 
or talk that way about that book, and that critic pursues an 
elistist, exclusionary approach to the degree that he or she 
castigates others for not following those particular rules. This is 
all ground you and I have covered offlist, of course, and I know that 
you know I'm intending no offense.

At 4:42 PM -0600 1/7/01, Dave Monroe wrote:
>Of course no offense intended, Doug.  Obviously, I've no doubt of
>Pynchon's genius, either, else I certainly wouldn't get the books, do
>the reading, post the posts, endure the hassle, and so forth.  I imagine
>we're all in the same boat (Narrenschiff? Whatever ...) on that one.  I
>just think one should exercise extreme caution in appealing, esp. in
>merely appealing, to Pynchon's "genius," "vision," "artistry," whatever,
>in arguing for or against any given reading, is all.  Or what he
>"obviously" would or would not have "intended."  Which seems to happen
>here from time to time.  Actually, I think it safer just not to invoke
>such notions at all, but ... but I see there are still pockets of
>nastiness here.  I think we all can ignore the outright insult posts
>(666 being particularly beastly indeed, of course; okay, I've registered
>my protest, fully expecting now ...), but I gotta ask, Terrance, kai,
>staging this little spat for our benefit, or are we heading for all-out
>Listal (cf. global) War here?  If the latter, well, then, of course, cut
>it out.  Or if the former, for that matter.  What will the children
>think?  Yrs ...

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